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The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to confirm this, the detection and study of rocky planets via…
The discovery of exoplanets has both focused and expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The consideration of Earth as an exoplanet, the knowledge of the orbital parameters of individual exoplanets, and our new understanding…
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has successfully discovered thousands of exoplanet candidates using the transit method, including hundreds of stars with multiple transiting planets. In order to estimate the frequency of these valuable…
Exoplanet surveys like Kepler, TESS, and K2 have shown that planetary systems are common in our galaxy. These surveys, along with several others, have identified thousands of planetary candidates, with more than five thousand having already…
Maneuverable tether-net systems launched from an unmanned spacecraft offer a promising solution for the active removal of large space debris. Guaranteeing the successful capture of such space debris is dependent on the ability to reliably…
We analyse the respective benefits and drawbacks of ground-based and space-based transit surveys for extrasolar planets. Based on simple but realistic assumptions about the fraction of lower main sequence stars harboring telluric and giant…
Many of the planets discovered by the Kepler satellite are close orbiting Super-Earths or Mini-Neptunes. Such objects exhibit a wide spread of densities for similar masses. One possible explanation for this density spread is giant…
Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…
The ejection of planets by the instability of planetary systems is a potential source of free-floating planets. We numerically simulate multi-planet systems to study the evolution process, the properties of surviving systems, and the…
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,…
With more than 4,300 confirmed exoplanets and counting, the next milestone in exoplanet research is to determine which of these newly found worlds could harbor life. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), spawn by magnetically active,…
We report relations between inner ($<1$ au) super Earths (planets with mass/radius between Earth and Neptune) and outer ($>1$ au) giant planets (mass $>0.3~M_{\rm J}$, or cold Jupiters) around Sun-like stars, based on data from both…
Extrasolar planets and belts of debris orbiting post-main-sequence single stars may become unbound as the evolving star loses mass. In multiple star systems, the presence or co-evolution of the additional stars can significantly complicate…
The vast diversity of planetary systems detected to date is defying our capability of understanding their formation and evolution. Well-defined volume-limited surveys are the best tool at our disposal to tackle the problem, via the…
This Letter reports on the detection of two super-Earth planets in the Gl581 system, already known to harbour a hot Neptune. One of the planets has a mass of 5 M_Earth and resides at the ``warm'' edge of the habitable zone of the star. It…
We develop a pebble-driven model to study the formation and evolution of planets around stars in the mass range of 0.08 and 1 solar mass. The growth and migration of a large number of individual protoplanetary embryos are simulated in a…
Secular perturbations from binary stars and distant massive planets can drive cold planets onto nearly parabolic orbits with pericenter passages extremely close to their host stars. Meanwhile, short-period super-Earths are frequently…
Planet 9 is an hypothetical object in the outer Solar system, which is as yet undiscovered. It has been speculated that it may be a terrestrial planet or gas/ice giant, or perhaps even a primordial black hole (or dark matter condensate).…
We explore the potential of conducting an experiment in a low Earth orbit spacecraft and using the Earth as a spin and mass source to constrain beyond-the-standard-model (BSM) long-range spin- and velocity-dependent interactions, which are…
The physical characterization of exoplanets will require to take spectra at several orbital positions. For that purpose, a direct imaging capability is necessary. Direct imaging requires an efficient stellar suppression mechanism,…