Related papers: The fragility of planetary systems
We develop a semi-analytical model for computing planetary system formation with the aim of explaining the observed diversity of planetary systems architectures and relate this primordial diversity with the initial properties of the disc…
Recent work has demonstrated that exoplanetary system properties correlate strongly with ambient stellar clustering in six-dimensional stellar position-velocity phase space, quantified by dividing planetary systems into sub-samples with…
Migration of planetesimals from the feeding zone of the terrestrial planets, which was divided into seven regions depending on the distance to the Sun, was simulated. The influence of gravity of all planets was taken into account. In some…
Planets are typically thought to form in protoplanetary disks left over from protostellar disk of their newly formed host star. However, an additional planetary formation route may exist in old evolved binary systems. In such systems…
Many features of the outer solar system are replicated in numerical simulations if the giant planets undergo an orbital instability that ejects one or more ice giants. During this instability, Jupiter and Saturn's orbits diverge, crossing…
Planet formation is generally described in terms of a system containing the host star and a protoplanetary disc, of which the internal properties (e.g. mass and metallicity) determine the properties of the resulting planetary system.…
The present dynamical configuration of planets in binary star systems may not reflect their formation process since the binary orbit may have changed in the past after the planet formation process was completed. An observed binary system…
The circular restricted three body problem is investigated in the context of accretion and scattering processes. In our model a large number of identical non-interacting mass-less planetesimals are considered in planar case orbiting a…
Planets are built from planetesimals: solids larger than a kilometer which grow by colliding pairwise. Planetesimals themselves are unlikely to form by two-body collisions; sub-km objects have gravitational fields individually too weak, and…
The ejection of planets by the instability of planetary systems is a potential source of free-floating planets. We numerically simulate multi-planet systems to study the evolution process, the properties of surviving systems, and the…
Most planetary systems are formed within stellar clusters, and these environments can shape their properties. This paper considers scattering encounters between solar systems and passing cluster members, and calculates the corresponding…
Most stars and their planets form in open clusters. Over 95 per cent of such clusters have stellar densities too low (less than a hundred stars per cubic parsec) to withstand internal and external dynamical stresses and fall apart within a…
It has recently been shown that stellar clustering plays an important role in shaping the properties of planetary systems. We investigate how the multiplicity distributions and orbital periods of planetary systems depend on the 6D phase…
Most stars form in embedded clusters. Stellar flybys may affect the orbital architecture of the systems by exciting the eccentricity and causing dynamical instability. Since, incidentally, the timescale over which a cluster loses its…
Whether binaries can harbor potentially habitable planets depends on several factors including the physical properties and the orbital characteristics of the binary system. While the former determines the location of the habitable zone…
The solar system was most likely born in a star cluster containing at least 1000 stars. It is highly probable that this cluster environment influenced various properties of the solar system like its chemical composition, size and the…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…
The Solar System hosts the most studied and best understood major and minor planetary bodies - and the only extraterrestrial bodies to have been visited by spacecraft. The Solar System therefore provides important constraints on both the…
Observations of extrasolar planets reveal that planets can be found in close binary systems, where the semi-major axis of the binary orbit is less than 20 AU. The existence of these planets challenges planet formation theory, because the…
An instability among the giant planets' orbits can match many aspects of the Solar System's current orbital architecture. We explore the possibility that this dynamical instability was triggered by the close passage of a star or substellar…