Related papers: The Origin of Planetary Ring Systems
Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the terrestrial planets of the solar system. Either they formed by collisions among planetary embryos from the inner solar system, or…
A planetary system may undergo significant radial rearrangement during the early part of its lifetime. Planet migration can come about through interaction with the surrounding planetesimal disk and the gas disk--while the latter is still…
A question central to understanding the origin of our solar system is: how do planets form in circumstellar disks around young stars? Because of the complex nature of the physical processes involved, multi-wavelength observations of large…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between several giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities would…
Over the past 10 years abundant evidence has emerged that many (if not all) stars are born with circumstellar disks. Understanding the evolution of post-accretion disks can provide strong constraints on theories of planet formation and…
In expansion of our recent proposal (Physics, 2020, 2, 213-276) that the solar system's evolution occurred in two stages -- during the first stage, the gaseous giants formed (via disk instability), and, during the second stage (caused by an…
We develop a semi-analytical model for computing planetary system formation with the aim of explaining the observed diversity of planetary systems architectures and relate this primordial diversity with the initial properties of the disc…
Progressive astronomical characterization of planet-forming disks and rocky exoplanets highlight the need for increasing interdisciplinary efforts to understand the birth and life cycle of terrestrial worlds in a unified picture. Here, we…
Recent observations have confirmed the existence of rings around minor bodies in the outer Solar System. These objects may possess satellites as well. Here we analytically investigate the interaction between such rings and satellites. We…
Planetary science beyond the boundaries of our Solar System is today in its infancy. Until a couple of decades ago, the detailed investigation of the planetary properties was restricted to objects orbiting inside the Kuiper Belt. Today, we…
Astrophysical fluid bodies that orbit close to one another induce tidal distortions and flows that are subject to dissipative processes. The spin and orbital motions undergo a coupled evolution over astronomical timescales, which is…
As part of a national scientific network 'Pathways to Habitability' the formation of planets and the delivery of water onto these planets is a key question as water is essential for the development of life. In the first part of the paper we…
Planetary systems have their origin in the gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. Through a process of accretion, is formed a massive star and a disk of planetesimals orbiting the star. Using a formalism analogous to quantum…
We address three questions regarding solar system planets. What determined their number? Why are their orbits nearly circular and coplanar? How long did they take to form? Runaway accretion in a disk of small bodies resulted in a tiny…
A planetary system consists of a host star and one or more planets, arranged into a particular configuration. Here, we consider what information belongs to the configuration, or ordering, of 4286 Kepler planets in their 3277 planetary…
The origin of the highly eccentric, inclined, and resonance-locked orbit of Pluto has long been a puzzle. A possible explanation has been proposed recently [Malhotra, R., {\it Nature} 365:819-21 (1993)] which suggests that these…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
Circumstellar disks are an integral part of the star formation process and the sites where planets are formed. Understanding the physical processes that drive their evolution, as disks evolve from optically thick to optically thin, is…
Planet-planet scattering best explains the eccentricity distribution of extrasolar giant planets. Past literature showed that the orbits of planets evolve due to planet-planet scattering. This work studies the spin evolution of planets in…
Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…