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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,…
Previous work has demonstrated orbital stability for 100 Myr of initially near-circular and coplanar small bodies in a region termed the 'Earth-Mars belt' from 1.08 au $< a <$ 1.28 au. Via numerical integration of 3000 particles, we studied…
Planets in extrasolar systems tend to interact such that their orbits lie near a boundary between apsidal libration and circulation, a "separatrix", with one eccentricity periodically reaching near-zero. One explanation, applied to the…
Transiting planets are generally close enough to their host stars that tides may govern their orbital and thermal evolution of these planets. We present calculations of the tidal evolution of recently discovered transiting planets and…
On timescales that greatly exceed an orbital period, typical planetary orbits evolve in a stochastic yet stable fashion. On even longer timescales, however, planetary orbits can spontaneously transition from bounded to unbound chaotic…
Ensembles of in-plane and inclined orbits in the vicinity of the Lagrange points of the terrestrial planets are integrated for up to 100 million years. The integrations incorporate the gravitational effects of Sun and the eight planets…
Dynamical scenarios of terrestrial planets formation involve strong perturbations of the inner part of the solar system by the giant-planets, leading to enhanced impact velocities and subsequent collisional erosion. We quantitatively…
Potentially habitable planets can orbit close enough to their host star that the differential gravity across their diameters can fix the rotation rate at a specific frequency, a process called tidal locking. Tidally locked planets on…
In the past two decades, transit surveys have revealed a class of planets with thick atmospheres -- sub-Neptunes -- that must have completed their accretion in protoplanet disks. When planets form in the gaseous disk, the gravitational…
The orbital evolution and stability of planetary systems with interaction from the belts is studied using the standard phase-plane analysis. In addition to the fixed point which corresponds to the Keplerian orbit, there are other fixed…
We investigate the long-term dynamical survival of Earth co-orbital asteroids, focusing on near-circular, near-planar orbits which existing studies suggest are the most stable. Through numerical integration of test particles we show that…
The population of known low- to intermediate-mass exoplanets shows a large spread in densities, which is believed to be due to the diversity of planetary atmospheres and thus controlled by planetary atmospheric mass loss. One of the main…
The discovery of seven ~Earth-mass planets, orbiting the 0.09 solar mass M-Dwarf TRAPPIST-1 captivated the public and sparked a proliferation of investigations into the system's origins. Among other properties, the resonant architecture of…
Asteroid impacts with the Earth may have played an essential role in the emergence of life on Earth through their creation of favorable niches for life, changes to the atmosphere and delivery of water. Consequently, we suggest two potential…
A large sample of planet-planet scattering events for three planet systems with different orbital separations and masses is analyzed with a multiple regression model. The dependence of the time for the onset of instability on the masses of…
The method of gyrochronology relates the age of its star to its rotation period. However, recent evidence of deviations from gyrochronology relations was reported in the literature. Here, we study the influence of tidal interaction between…
The discovery of Sedna places new constraints on the origin and evolution of our solar system. Here we investigate the possibility that a close encounter with another star produced the observed edge of the Kuiper belt, at roughly 50 AU, and…
The process leading to the formation of the terrestrial planet remains elusive. In a previous publication, we have shown that, if the first generation of planetesimals forms in a ring at about 1 AU and the gas disk's density peaks at the…
The orbital evolution of asteroidal, trans-Neptunian, and cometary dust particles under the gravitational influence of planets, the Poynting-Robertson drag, radiation pressure, and solar wind drag was integrated. Results of our runs were…
Observed planetary debris in white dwarf atmospheres predominately originate from the destruction of small bodies on highly eccentric ($>0.99$) orbits. Despite their importance, these minor planets have coupled physical and orbital…