Related papers: "Isocrater" impacts: Conditions and mantle dynamic…
We model the primary crater production of small (D < 100 m) primary craters on Mars and the Moon using the observed annual flux of terrestrial fireballs. From the size-frequency distribution (SFD) of meteor diameters, with appropriate…
Not only do the sampled terrestrial worlds (Earth, Mars, and asteroid 4 Vesta) differ in their mass-independent (nucleosynthetic) isotopic compositions of many elements (e.g. $\varepsilon^{48}$Ca, $\varepsilon^{50}$Ti, $\varepsilon^{54}$Cr,…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
Astrophysical observations reveal a large diversity of radii and masses of exoplanets. It is important to characterize the interiors of exoplanets to understand planetary diversity and further determine how unique, or not, Earth is.…
It is generally accepted that silicate-metal (`rocky') planet formation relies on coagulation from a mixture of sub-Mars sized planetary embryos and (smaller) planetesimals that dynamically emerge from the evolving circum-solar disc in the…
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…
Stars do not form in isolation but together with other stars, and often in a clustered environment. Depending on the initial conditions in these environments, such as initial density and substructure, the distances of encounters between…
The Earth--Moon system has been experiencing impacts from asteroids and comets for billions of years. The Moon, as an airless body, has preserved a distinct record of these events in form of impact craters and ejecta deposits, offering…
Models of planet formation have shown that giant planets have a large impact on the number, masses and orbits of terrestrial planets that form. In addition, they play an important role in delivering volatiles from material that formed…
Almost all the planets of our solar system have moons. Each planetary system has however unique characteristics. The Martian system has not one single big moon like the Earth, not tens of moons of various sizes like for the giant planets,…
Placing the architecture of the Solar System within the broader context of planetary architectures is one of the primary topics of interest within planetary science. Exoplanet discoveries have revealed a large range of system architectures,…
Observations suggest that impactors and volcanism are connected, but the mechanism that links these events is unknown. This research proposes the impact exsolution hypothesis to explain how planetary scale collisions trigger volcanism. This…
Combining isotopic constraints from meteorite data with dynamical models of planet formation proves to be advantageous in identifying the best model for terrestrial planet formation. Prior studies have shown that the probability of…
In this paper we present a new method for dating the surface of the Moon, obtained by modeling the incoming flux of impactors and converting it into a size distribution of resulting craters. We compare the results from this model with the…
A planet embedded in a protoplanetary disk produces a gap by disk-planet interaction. It also generates velocity perturbation of gas, which can also be observed as deviations from the Keplerian rotation in the channel map of molecular line…
Erosive collisions among planetary embryos in the inner solar system can lead to multiple remnant bodies, varied in mass, composition and residual velocity. Some of the smaller, unbound debris may become available to seed the main asteroid…
The primary epoch of planetary accretion concludes with giant impacts - highly energetic collisions between proto-planets that can play a key role in shaping a planet's inventory of volatile elements. Previous work has shown that single…
We simulate the hypothesised collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars-sized impactor that created the Moon. Amongst the resulting debris disk in some impacts, we find a self-gravitating clump of material. It is roughly the mass of the…
Stellar activity has a particularly strong influence on planets at small orbital distances, such as close-in exoplanets. For such planets, we present two extreme cases of stellar variability, namely stellar coronal mass ejections and…
<Abridged> The impact of a meteoroid onto an asteroid transfers linear and angular momentum to the larger body, which may affect its orbit and its rotational state. Here we show that the meteoroid environment of our Solar System can have an…