Related papers: Erosive Hit-and-Run Impact Events: Debris Unbound
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
Most meteorites are fragments from recent collisions experienced in the asteroid belt. In such a hyper-velocity collision, the smaller collision partner is destroyed, whereas a crater on the asteroid is formed or it is entirely disrupted,…
Giant impacts refer to collisions between two objects each of which is massive enough to be considered at least a planetary embryo. The putative collision suffered by the proto-Earth that created the Moon is a prime example, though most…
The final stage of planet formation is dominated by collisions between planetary embryos. The dynamics of this stage determine the orbital configuration and the mass and composition of planets in the system. In the solar system, late giant…
Numerical simulations of the stochastic end stage of planet formation typically begin with a population of embryos and planetesimals that grow into planets by merging. We analyzed the impact parameters of collisions leading to the growth of…
We consider the observational signatures of giant impacts between planetary embryos. While the debris released in the impact remains in a clump for only a single orbit, there is a much longer lasting asymmetry caused by the fact that all…
We investigate the outcome of collisions of Ceres-sized planetesimals composed of a rocky core and a shell of water ice. These collisions are not only relevant for explaining the formation of planetary embryos in early planetary systems,…
Planet--planet scattering is a major dynamical mechanism able to significantly alter the architecture of a planetary system. In addition to that, it may also affect the formation and retention of a debris disk by the system. A violent…
The asteroid belt is an open window on the history of the Solar System, as it preserves records of both its formation process and its secular evolution. The progenitors of the present-day asteroids formed in the Solar Nebula almost…
In the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, planets are predicted to undergo pairwise collisions known as giant impacts. Here we present a high-resolution database of giant impacts for differentiated colliding bodies of iron-silicate…
In this paper, we present results from a multi-stage numerical campaign to begin to explain and determine why extreme debris disk detections are rare, what types of impacts will result in extreme debris disks and what we can learn about the…
Planet-planet collisions are a common outcome of instability in systems of transiting planets close to the star, as well as occurring during in-situ formation of such planets from embryos. Previous N-body studies of instability amongst…
Many debris discs reveal a two-component structure, with an outer Kuiper-belt analogue and a warm inner component whose origin is still a matter of debate. One possibility is that warm emission stems from an "asteroid belt" closer in to the…
Debris disc analysis and modelling provide crucial information about the structure and the processes at play in extrasolar planetary systems. In binary systems, this issue is more complex because the disc should in addition respond to the…
The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…
The eccentric orbits of the known extrasolar giant planets provide evidence that most planet-forming environments undergo violent dynamical instabilities. Here, we numerically simulate the impact of giant planet instabilities on planetary…
Circumstellar debris disks are the extrasolar analogues of the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. They consist of comets and leftover planetesimals that continuously collide and produce circumstellar dust that can be observed as infrared…
The dynamical and physical properties of asteroid family members are widely used to reconstruct the collisional evolution of the main belt and of individual objects. Families offer insights into the properties of the parent bodies and the…
The implication of small amounts of cohesion within relatively small rubble pile asteroids is investigated with regard to their evolution under the persistent presence of the YORP effect. We find that below a characteristic size, which is a…
The dynamical interaction of minor bodies (such as comets or asteroids) with planets plays an essential role in the planetary system's architecture and evolution. As a result of these interactions, structures like the Kuiper belt and the…