Related papers: The Case for a Deep Search for Earth's Trojan Aste…

Small bodies, the unaccreted leftovers of planetary formation, are often mistaken for the leftovers of planetary science in the sense that they are everything else after the planets and their satellites (or sometimes just their regular…

Asteroids can be considered as sources of contamination of point sources and also sources of confusion noise, depending whether their presence is detected in the image or their flux is under the detection limit. We estimate that at low…

Extraterrestrial technology may exist in the Solar System without our knowledge. This is because the vastness of space, combined with our limited searches to date, implies that any remote unpiloted exploratory probes of extraterrestrial…

Close encounters of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) with large asteroids are a possible source of systematic errors in trajectory propagations and asteroid mitigation. It is, thus, necessary to identify those large asteroids that have to be…

Theoretical studies predict that Trojans are likely a frequent byproduct of planet formation and evolution. We examine the sensitivity of transit timing observations for detecting Trojan companions to transiting extrasolar planets. We…

Super-Earths, objects slightly larger than Earth and slightly smaller than Uranus, have found a special place in exoplanetary science. As a new class of planetary bodies, these objects have challenged models of planet formation at both ends…

Small primordial black holes could be captured by rocky planets or asteroids, consume their liquid cores from inside and leave hollow structures. We calculate the surface density and surface tension of a hollow structure around a black hole…

Recently the first Earth Trojan has been observed (Mainzer et al., ApJ 731) and found to be on an interesting orbit close to the Lagrange point L4 (Connors et al., Nature 475). In the present study we therefore perform a detailed…

The metal content of asteroids is of great interest, not only for theories of their origins and the evolution of the solar system but, in the case of near-Earth objects (NEOs), also for impact mitigation planning and endeavors in the field…

Magnetic fields are known to reside in many astrophysical objects and are now believed to be crucially important for the creation of phenomena on a wide variety of scales. However, the role of the magnetic field in the bodies that we…

(This is a general physics level overview article about hidden sectors, and how they motivate searches for long-lived particles. Intended for publication in Physics Today.) Searches for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider have so far…

Co-orbital objects, also known as trojans, are frequently found in simulations of planetary system formation. In these configurations, a planet shares its orbit with other massive bodies. It is still unclear why there have not been any…

Terrestrial planetary systems may exist around nearby stars as the Earth-sized counterparts to the many giant planets already discovered within the solar neighborhood. In this chapter we first discuss the numerous techniques which have been…

A number of studies, referring to the observed Trojan asteroids of various planets in our Solar System, or to hypothetical Trojan bodies in extrasolar planetary systems, have emphasized the importance of so-called secondary resonances in…

Axions are an increasingly popular topic in theoretical physics, and are sparking a global experimental effort. In the following I review the motivations for the existence of axions, the theories underlying them, and the methods to search…

We review the observational and theoretical constraints on extragalactic magnetic fields across cosmic environment. In the next decade, the combination of sophisticated numerical simulations and various observational probes might succeed in…

The study of planets outside our solar system may lead to major advances in our understanding of the Earth, and provide insight into the universal set of rules by which planets form and evolve. To achieve these goals requires applying…

The Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) may preserve evidence of planet building in their orbital and size-distributions. While all populations show steep size-distributions for large objects, recently relative deficit of Neptunian Trojans and…

Even the elusive neutrinos are trapped in matter, albeit transiently, in several astrophysical circumstances. Their interactions with the ambient matter not only reveal the properties of such exotic matter itself, but also shed light on the…

Do white dwarfs host asteroid systems? Although several lines of argument suggest that white dwarfs may be orbited by large populations of asteroids, transits would provide the most direct evidence. We demonstrate that the Kepler mission…