Related papers: Could Jupiter or Saturn Have Ejected a Fifth Giant…
The formation history of Jupiter has been of interest due to its ability to shape the solar system's history. Yet little attention has been paid to the formation and growth of Saturn and the other giant planets. Here, we explore the…
A fundamental question in the study of planetary system demographics is: how common is the solar system architecture? The primary importance of this question lies in the potential of planetary systems to create habitable environments, and…
The existence of Uranus and Neptune presents severe difficulties for the core accretion model for the formation of ice giant planets. We suggest an alternative mechanism, namely disk instability leading to the formation of gas giant…
The formation of the solar system's giant planets predated the ultimate epoch of massive impacts that concluded the process of terrestrial planet formation. Following their formation, the giant planets' orbits evolved through an episode of…
In this work, we hunt for the best places to find exo-Earths in the currently known exoplanet population. While it is still unclear whether Jupiter had a beneficial or detrimental effect on the creation of the right environment for a…
The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are the least understood class of planets in our solar system but the most frequently observed type of exoplanets. Presumed to have a small rocky core, a deep interior comprising ~70% heavy elements…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent years, the number of known exoplanets in star clusters remains tiny. This may be a consequence of close stellar encounters perturbing the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in…
Considering the possibility of complex organic molecules and microbial life appearing under the ice shell of those satellites in the Solar system, this study investigates the possible analog sources (targeting the potential ice satellite…
Saturn formed beyond the snow line in the primordial solar nebula that made it possible for it to accrete a large mass. Disk instability and core accretion models have been proposed for Saturn's formation, but core accretion is favored on…
Models of planet formation have shown that giant planets have a large impact on the number, masses and orbits of terrestrial planets that form. In addition, they play an important role in delivering volatiles from material that formed…
Natural satellite systems present a large variety of orbital configurations in the solar system. While some are clearly the result of known processes, others still have largely unexplained eccentricity and inclination values. Iapetus has a…
The discovery of planetary systems outside of the solar system has challenged some of the tenets of planetary formation. Among the difficult-to-explain observations, are systems with a giant planet orbiting a very-low mass star, such as the…
The large scale structure of the Solar System has been shaped by a transient dynamical instability that may have been triggered by the interaction of the giants planets with a massive primordial disk of icy debris. In this work, we…
An interesting feature of the giant planets of our solar system is the existence of regions around these objects where no irregular satellites are observed. Surveys have shown that, around Jupiter, such a region extends from the outermost…
The 14 Herculis system hosts two super-Jupiters on eccentric, significantly misaligned orbits. This orbital architecture represents a dynamical puzzle that demands explanation. In this work, we reproduce the system's dynamical history and…
Dynamical instabilities among giant planets are thought to be nearly ubiquitous, and culminate in the ejection of one or more planets into interstellar space. Here we perform N-body simulations of dynamical instabilities while accounting…
Observations of the population of cold Jupiter planets ($r>$1 AU) show that nearly all of these planets orbit their host star on eccentric orbits. For planets up to a few Jupiter masses, eccentric orbits are thought to be the outcome of…
Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing of the giant planets, can be explained if planets radially migrated by exchanging orbital energy and momentum with outer disk planetesimals. Neptune's…
The irregular satellites of outer planets are thought to have been captured from heliocentric orbits. The exact nature of the capture process, however, remains uncertain. We examine the possibility that irregular satellites were captured…