Related papers: Making Planet Nine: A Scattered Giant in the Outer…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…
Unexpected clustering in the orbital elements of minor bodies beyond the Kuiper belt has led to speculations that our solar system actually hosts nine planets, the eight established plus a hypothetical "Planet Nine". Several recent studies…
Recent studies of solar system formation suggest that the solar system's giant planets formed and migrated in the protoplanetary disk to reach resonant orbits with all planets inside 15 AU from the Sun. After the gas disk's dispersal,…
The existence of a giant planet beyond Neptune -- referred to as Planet Nine (P9) -- has been inferred from the clustering of longitude of perihelion and pole position of distant eccentric Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). After updating…
Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…
Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…
Over the course of the past two decades, observational surveys have unveiled the intricate orbital structure of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to a host of readily-predictable orbital…
It is likely that multiple bodies with masses between those of Mars and Earth ("planetary embryos") formed in the outer planetesimal disk of the solar system. Some of these were likely scattered by the giant planets into orbits with…
The outer giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, pose a challenge to theories of planet formation. They exist in a region of the Solar System where long dynamical timescales and a low primordial density of material would have conspired to make…
The potential existence of a distant planet ("Planet Nine") in the Solar system has prompted a re-think about the evolution of planetary systems. As the Sun transitions from a main sequence star into a white dwarf, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus…
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 group of newly observed extreme trans-Neptunian objects exhibit unexpected orbital confinement, characterized by the alignment of orbital angular momentum vectors and apsidal lines. It is proposed that an undiscovered giant planet, named…
Evidence suggests the existence of a large planet in the outer Solar System, Planet Nine, with a predicted mass of 6.6 +2.6 / -1.7 Earth masses (Brown et al., 2024). Based on mass radius composition models, planet formation theory, and…
In the nucleated instability picture of gas giant formation, the final stage is the rapid accretion of a massive gas envelope by a solid core, bringing about a tenfold or more increase in mass. This tends to trigger the scattering of any…
Planets of 1-4 times Earth's size on orbits shorter than 100 days exist around 30-50% of all Sun-like stars. In fact, the Solar System is particularly outstanding in its lack of "hot super-Earths" (or "mini-Neptunes"). These planets -- or…
Close-in giant planets are thought to have formed in the cold outer regions of planetary systems and migrated inward, passing through the orbital parameter space occupied by the terrestrial planets in our own Solar System. We present…
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…
From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution. By far most of the planets known beyond the…
Planet formation occurs around a wide range of stellar masses and stellar system architectures. An improved understanding of the formation process can be achieved by studying it across the full parameter space, particularly toward the…
Among the outer solar system minor planet orbits there is an observed gap in perihelion between roughly 50 and 65 au at eccentricities $e\gtrsim0.65$. Through a suite of observational simulations, we show that the gap arises from two…