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The first stages of planet formation take place in protoplanetary disks that are largely made up of gas. Understanding how the gas affects planetesimals in the protoplanetary disk is therefore essential. In this paper, we discuss whether or…
Past high-energy density laboratory experiments provided insights into the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, and the destruction of interstellar clouds. In a typical experimental setting, a laser-driven planar blast wave interacts…
V-type asteroids are a taxonomic class whose surface is associated to a basaltic composition. The only known source of V-type asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt is (4) Vesta, that is located in the inner part of the belt. However, many…
Basaltic rocks occur widely on the terrestrial planets and differentiated asteroids, including the asteroid 4 Vesta. We conducted a shock recovery experiment with decaying compressive pulses on a terrestrial basalt at Chiba Institute of…
Circumstellar debris disks are the extrasolar analogues of the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. They consist of comets and leftover planetesimals that continuously collide and produce circumstellar dust that can be observed as infrared…
The size distribution of asteroids in the solar system suggests that they formed top-down, with 100-1000 km bodies forming from the gravitational collapse of dense clumps of small solid particles. We investigate the conditions under which…
We consider the possibility that aeolian (wind blown) processes occur on small, 1 to 100~km diameter, planetesimals when they were embedded in the protosolar nebula. Drag from a headwind within a protostellar disk is sufficiently large to…
Some asteroids eject dust, unexpectedly producing transient, comet-like comae and tails. First ascribed to the sublimation of near-surface water ice, mass losing asteroids (also called "main-belt comets") can in fact be driven by a…
Many debris disks seen in scattered light have shapes that imply their dust grains trace highly eccentric, apsidally aligned orbits. Apsidal alignment is surprising, especially for dust. Even when born from an apse-aligned ring of parent…
The overall shape, internal structure and surface morphology of small bodies such as asteroids and comets are determined to a large degree by the last global-scale impact or disruption event. Depending on the specific energy, impacts lead…
Although debris disks may be common in exoplanet systems, only a few systems are known in which debris disks and planets coexist. Planets and the surrounding stellar population can have a significant impact on debris disk evolution. Here we…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
Young and forming planetesimals experience impacts from particles present in a protostellar disk. Using crater scaling laws, we integrate ejecta distributions for oblique impacts. For impacts at 10 to 65 m/s, expected for impacts associated…
Small asteroids intersecting Earth's orbit can deliver extraterrestrial rocks to the Earth, called meteorites. This process is accompanied by a luminous phenomena in the atmosphere, called bolides or fireballs. Observations of bolides…
Five new correlations between sunspot activity and orbiting position of the Jovian planets are detected. In order to explain these correlations it is suggested that the resonance of the outer planets destabilizes the orbit of Kuiper Belt…
The regolith-covered surfaces of asteroids preserve records of geophysical processes that have occurred both at their surfaces and sometimes also in their interiors. As a result of the unique micro-gravity environment that these bodies…
We revisit the problem of secular resonance sweeping during the dissipation of a protoplanetary disk and its possible role in exciting the orbits of primordial asteroids, in the light of recent models of solar system evolution. We develop…
We apply our recently elaborated, powerful numerical approach to the high-resolution modeling of the structure and emission of circumstellar dust disks, incorporating all relevant physical processes. Specifically, we examine the resonant…
The sticking of micron sized dust particles due to surface forces in circumstellar disks is the first stage in the production of asteroids and planets. The key ingredients that drive this process are the relative velocity between the dust…
Understanding the geological modification processes on asteroids can provide information concerning their surface history. Images of small asteroids from spacecraft show a depletion in terms of smaller craters. Seismic shaking was…