Related papers: Multiple Impact Origin for the Moon
During the final stage of planetary formation, different formation pathways of planetary embryos could significantly influence the observed variations in planetary densities. Of the approximately 5,000 exoplanets identified to date, a…
Magma ocean crystallisation sets up the early structure and long-term evolution of terrestrial planets. Recent seismic evidence signals the presence of a silicate layer at the base of Mars' mantle. Magma-ocean crystallisation and subsequent…
The paper addresses the possibility of a young Mars having had a massive moon, which synchronised the rotation of Mars, and gave Mars an initial asymmetric triaxiality to be later boosted by geological processes. It turns out that a moon of…
Due to tidal interactions in the Earth-Moon system, the spin of the Earth slows down and the Moon drifts away. This recession of the Moon is now measured with great precision, but it has been realized, more than fifty years ago, that simple…
We examine the mechanisms by which atmosphere can be eroded by giant impacts onto Earth-like planets with thin atmospheres, using 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations with sufficient resolution to directly model the fate of…
The (yet-to-be confirmed) discovery of a Neptune-sized moon around the ~3.2 Jupiter-mass planet in Kepler 1625 puts interesting constraints on the formation of the system. In particular, the relatively wide orbit of the moon around the…
The population of natural objects in a 1:1 mean motion resonance with Earth are known as Earth's co-orbitals. Main belt objects can dynamically evolve into Earth co-orbitals but taxonomic studies of some of them have suggested that they are…
The solar wind plasma from the Sun interacts with the Moon, generating a wake structure behind it, since the Moon is to a good approximation an insulator, has no intrinsic magnetic field and a very thin atmosphere. The lunar wake in…
The Earths core formation process has decisive effect in the chemical differentiation between the Earths core and its mantle. Here, we propose a new core formation model which is caused by a special giant impact. This model suggests that…
"Moon-magnetosphere interaction" stands for the interaction of magnetospheric plasma with an orbiting moon. Observations and modeling of moon-magnetosphere interaction is a highly interesting area of space physics because it helps to better…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets, those most adequate for life to begin and evolve have been sought. Due to observational bias, however, most of the discovered planets so far are gas giants, precluding their habitability.…
Ever since the Apollo era, a question has remained as to the origin of the lunar swirls (high albedo regions coincident with the regions of surface magnetization). Different processes have been proposed for their origin. In this work we…
Similarities in the non-mass dependent isotopic composition of refractory elements with the bulk silicate Earth suggest that both the Earth and the Moon formed from the same material reservoir. On the other hand, the Moon's volatile…
In a previous paper we treated within the framework of our Projective Unified Field Theory (Schmutzer 2004, Schmutzer 2005a) the 2-body system (e.g. earth-moon system) with a rotating central body in a rather abstract manner. Here a…
It has been proposed recently that the first step in the formation of both rocky and gas giant planets is dust sedimentation into a solid core inside a gas clump (giant planet embryo). The clumps are then assumed to migrate closer to the…
The timeline of the lunar bombardment in the first Gy of the Solar System remains unclear. Some basin-forming impacts occurred 3.9-3.7Gy ago. Many other basins formed before, but their exact ages are not precisely known. There are two…
The importance of highly siderophile elements (HSEs) to track planetary late accretion has long been recognized. However, the precise nature of the Moon's accretional history remains enigmatic. There exists a significant mismatch of HSE…
The Cassini spacecraft revealed the spectacular, highly irregular shapes of the small inner moons of Saturn, ranging from the unique "ravioli-like" forms of Pan and Atlas to the highly elongated structure of Prometheus. Closest to Saturn,…
The irregular moons orbit the giant planets on distant, inclined, and eccentric trajectories, in sharp contrast with the coplanar and quasicircular orbits of the regular moons. The origin of these irregular moons is still an open question,…
Recent studies have shown that large exomoons can form in the accretion disks around super-Jovian extrasolar planets. These planets are abundant at about 1 AU from Sun-like stars, which makes their putative moons interesting for studies of…