Related papers: Forming Mercury by Giant Impacts
This contribution is a first step aiming to address a general question: what can be concluded on impact craters which exist on various planetary system objects, by combining astronomical data and known theoretical results from solid state…
One of the main scenarios of planet formation is the core accretion model where a massive core forms first and then accretes a gaseous envelope. This core forms by accreting solids, either planetesimals, or pebbles. A key constraint in this…
We present conclusions from a large number of N-body simulations of the giant impact phase of terrestrial planet formation. We focus on new results obtained from the recently proposed Grand Tack model, which couples the gas-driven migration…
The formation of satellites is thought to be a natural by-product of planet formation in our Solar System, and thus, moons of extrasolar planets (exomoons) may be abundant in extrasolar planetary systems, as well. Exomoons have yet to be…
Some Jupiter-mass exoplanets contain $\sim$$100\, M_\oplus$ of metals, well above the $\sim$$10\, M_\oplus$ typically needed in a solid core to trigger giant planet formation by runaway gas accretion. We demonstrate that such `heavy-metal…
In the standard scenario of planet formation, terrestrial planets, ice giants, and cores of gas giants are formed by the accumulation of planetesimals. However, there are few N-body simulation studies of planetesimal accretion that…
During the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, hit-and-run collisions are about as common as accretionary mergers, for expected velocities and angles of giant impacts. Average hit-and-runs leave two major remnants plus debris: the…
Uranus has a tilted rotation axis, which is supposed to be caused by a giant impact. In general, an impact event also changes the internal compositional distribution and drives mass ejection from the planet, which may provide the origin of…
Discovery of only handful of exoplanets required to establish a correlation between giant planet occurrence and metallicity of their host stars. More than 20 years have already passed from that discovery, however, many questions are still…
Metal-rich asteroids and iron meteorites are considered core remnants of differentiated planetesimals and or products of oxygen-depleted accretion. Investigating the origins of iron-rich planetesimals could provide key insights into planet…
We present a model to compute baryon and meson transverse momentum distributions, and their ratios, in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The model allows to compute the probability to form colorless bound states of either two or three…
In spite of substantial advancements in simulating planet formation, the planet Mercury's diminutive mass, isolated orbit, and the absence of planets with shorter orbital periods in the solar system continue to befuddle numerical accretion…
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 impact flux over the last 3 Ga in the inner Solar System is commonly assumed to be constant through time. However, asteroid break-up events in the main belt may have been responsible for cratering spikes over the last ~2 Ga on the…
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 Juno mission has provided an accurate determination of Jupiter's gravitational field, which has been used to obtain information about the planet's composition and internal structure. Several models of Jupiter's structure that fit the…
Stars and planets both form by accreting material from a surrounding disk. Because they grow from the same material, theory predicts that there should be a relationship between their compositions. In this study, we search for a…
There are two popular ways to speed up simulations of planet formation via increasing the collision probability: ({\it i}) confine motion to 2D, ({\it ii}) artificially enhance the physical radii of the bodies by an expansion factor. In…
In an earlier work, we found that large metallic iron fractions in dust aggregates and strong magnetic fields boost preplanetary growth. This sets an initial bias for the formation of Mercury-like planets in the inner part of protoplanetary…
One of the unique aspects of Earth is that it has a fractionally large Moon, which is thought to have formed from a Moon-forming disk generated by a giant impact. The Moon stabilizes the Earth's spin axis at least by several degrees and…