Related papers: The stratification of regolith on celestial object…
Coagulation of dust particles in protoplanetary disks is the first step on the journey to the formation of planets. The surface free energy (SFE) of the dust particles determines the effectiveness of particles sticking to each other after…
The gravitational instability of a dust layer is one of the scenarios for planetesimal formation. If the density of a dust layer becomes sufficiently high as a result of the sedimentation of dust grains toward the midplane of a…
Recent research on the buildup of rocks from small dust grains has reaffirmed that grain growth in protoplanetary disks should occur quickly. Calculation of growth rates have been made for a variety of growth processes and generally predict…
Previously we presented a numerical model that predicts trajectories of lunar dust, soil, and gravel blown by the engine exhaust of a lunar lander. The model uses the gas density, velocity vector field, and temperature predicted by…
The radiative properties of interstellar dust are affected not only by the grain size distribution but also by the grain porosity. We develop a model for the evolution of size-dependent grain porosity and grain size distribution over the…
Hierarchical galaxy formation models predict the development of elliptical galaxies through a combination of the mergers and interactions of smaller galaxies. We are carrying out a study of Early-Type Galaxies (ETGs) using GAMA…
Context: Protoplanetary disks are observed to remain dust-rich for up to several million years. Theoretical modeling, on the other hand, raises several questions. Firstly, dust coagulation occurs so rapidly, that if the small dust grains…
Dust particles sediment toward the midplanes of protoplanetary disks, forming dust-rich sublayers encased in gas. What densities must the particle sublayer attain before it can fragment by self-gravity? We describe various candidate…
We study the local and global rheology of non-Brownian suspensions in a solvent that is not density-matched, leading to either creaming or sedimentation of the particles. Both local and global measurements show that the incomplete density…
We investigate experimentally and theoretically thin layers of colloid particles held adjacent to a solid substrate by gravity. Epifluorescence, confocal, and holographic microscopy, combined with Monte Carlo and hydrodynamic simulations,…
Observations show that early-type galaxies contain a considerable amount of interstellar dust, most of which is believed to exist as a diffusely distributed component. We construct a four-parameter elliptical galaxy model in order to…
The early stages of planet formation are still not well understood. Coagulation models have revealed numerous obstacles to the dust growth, such as the bouncing, fragmentation and radial drift barriers. We study the interplay between dust…
We investigate dust growth due to settling in a 1D vertical column of a protoplanetary disk. It is known from the observed 10 micron feature in disk SEDs, that small micron-sized grains are present at the disk atmosphere throughout the…
Previous theoretical works have shown that in optically thin disks, dust grains are photoelectrically stripped of electrons by starlight, heating nearby gas and possibly creating a dust clumping instability, the photoelectric instability…
The vertical transport of solid material in a stratified medium is fundamental to a number of environmental applications, with implications for the carbon cycle and nutrient transport in marine ecosystems. In this work, we study the…
We calculate the formation of dust clouds in atmospheres of giant gas-planets. The chemical structure and the evolution of the grain size distribution in the dust cloud layer is discussed based on a consistent treatment of seed formation,…
A systematic analysis of methods for computing the trajectories of solid-phase particles applied in modern astrophysics codes designed for modeling gas-dust circumstellar disks has been carried out for the first time. The motion of grains…
We study the aging of colloidal gels using light microscopy movies of depletion gels from the International Space Station. Under such microgravity conditions, we observe a slowdown in particle dynamics consistent with gel aging. Stronger…
We present a new general model for the prediction of the drag coefficient of non-spherical solid particles of regular and irregular shapes falling in gas or liquid valid for sub-critical particle Reynolds numbers (i.e. $Re < 3 \times…
Rapid orbital drift of macroscopic dust particles is one of the major obstacles against planetesimal formation in protoplanetary disks. We reexamine this problem by considering porosity evolution of dust aggregates. We apply a porosity…