Related papers: Terrestrial planets across space and time
Revealing the mechanisms shaping the architecture of planetary systems is crucial for our understanding of their formation and evolution. In this context, it has been recently proposed that stellar clustering might be the key in shaping the…
The last several years have brought about a dynamic shift in the view of exoplanetary systems in the post-main sequence, perhaps epitomized by the evidence for surviving rocky planetary bodies at white dwarfs. Coinciding with the launch of…
Most known extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been discovered using the radial velocity$^{\bf 1,2}$ or transit$^{\bf 3}$ methods. Both are biased towards planets that are relatively close to their parent stars, and studies find that…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
Models of terrestrial planet formation for our solar system have been successful in producing planets with masses and orbits similar to those of Venus and Earth. However, these models have generally failed to produce Mars-sized objects…
We explore the relations between physical and orbital properties of planets and properties of their host stars to identify the main observable signatures of the formation and evolution processes of planetary systems. We use a large sample…
Understanding the demographics of close-in planets is crucial for insights into exoplanet formation and evolution. We present a detailed analysis of occurrence rates for close-in (0.5-16 day) planets with radii between 2 and…
(Shortened) We have used the measured properties of the stars in the 79 exoplanetary systems with one or more planets that have been observed in transit, to estimate each system's present habitability. The measured stellar properties have…
The currently feasible method of detection of Earth-mass planets is transit photometry, with detection probability decreasing with a planet's distance from the star. The existence or otherwise of short-period terrestrial planets will tell…
Determining the occurrence rate of terrestrial-mass planets (m_p < 10M_earth) is a critically important step on the path towards determining the frequency of Earth-like planets (eta-Earth), and hence the uniqueness of our Solar system.…
More than 450 exoplanets have currently been detected, most of them by the radial velocity (RV) technique. While the majority of exoplanets have been found around main-sequence (MS) FGK stars (M 1.5M*), only a small fraction (- 10%) have…
Observations of circumstellar disks around stars as a function of stellar properties such as mass, metallicity, multiplicity, and age, provide constraints on theories concerning the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Utilizing…
Age is a stellar parameter that is both fundamental and difficult to determine. Among middle-aged M dwarfs, the most prolific hosts of close-in and detectable exoplanets, gyrochronology is the most promising method to assign ages, but…
The questions of how planets form and how common Earth-like planets are can be addressed by measuring the distribution of exoplanet masses and orbital periods. We report the occurrence rate of close-in planets (with orbital periods less…
We use a multiannulus accretion code to investigate debris disks in the terrestrial zone, at 0.7-1.3 AU around a 1 solar mass star. Terrestrial planet formation produces a bright dusty ring of debris with a lifetime of at least 1 Myr. The…
Earth will become uninhabitable within 2-3 Gyr as a result of the moving boundaries of the habitable zone caused by the increasing luminosity of the Sun. Predictions about the future of habitable conditions on Earth include a decline in…
The bulk-metallicity determination of giant exoplanets is essential to constrain their formation and evolution pathways and to compare them to the solar system. Previous studies inferred an inverse relation between the mass and bulk…
Planets are thought to form via accretion from a remnant disk of gas and solids around a newly formed star. During this process material in the disk either remains bound to the star as part of either a planet, a smaller celestial body, or…
Terrestrial planets in temperate orbits around very low mass stars are likely to have evolved in a very different way than solar system planets, and in particular Earth. However, because these are the first planets that are and will be…
Since the first massive planet in a short period orbit was discovered, the question arised how such an object could have formed. There are basically two formation scenarios: migration due to planet-disk or planet-planet interaction. Which…