Related papers: Dynamical Constraints on Mercury's Collisional Ori…
With approximately one ninth of Earth's mass, Mars is widely considered to be a stranded planetary embryo that never became a fully-grown planet. A currently popular planet formation theory predicts that Mars formed near Earth and Venus and…
The rotation of Mercury is presently captured in a 3/2 spin-orbit resonance with the orbital mean motion. The capture mechanism is well understood as the result of tidal interactions with the Sun combined with planetary perturbations.…
Late accretion is a process that strongly modulated surface geomorphic and geochemical features of Mercury. Yet, the fate of the impactors and their effects on Mercury's surface through the bombardment epoch are not clear. Using Monte-Carlo…
Recent observations of rocky super-Earths have revealed an apparent wider distribution of Fe/Mg ratios, or core to mantle ratios, than the planets in our Solar System. This study aims to understand how much of the chemical diversity in the…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
Major element fractionation among chondrites has been discussed for decades as ratios relative to Si or Mg. Recently, by expressing ratios relative to Fe, I discovered a new relationship admitting the possibility that ordinary chondrite…
Rocky planets both in and outside of our solar system are observed to have a range of core-mass fractions (CMFs). Imperfect collisions can preferentially strip mantle material from a planet, changing its CMF, and are therefore thought to be…
Numerical simulations of the stochastic end stage of planet formation typically begin with a population of embryos and planetesimals that grow into planets by merging. We analyzed the impact parameters of collisions leading to the growth of…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
Planet formation models have been developed during the last years in order to try to reproduce the observations of both the solar system, and the extrasolar planets. Some of these models have partially succeeded, focussing however on…
The final stage in the formation of terrestrial planets consists of the accumulation of ~1000-km ``planetary embryos'' and a swarm of billions of 1-10 km ``planetesimals.'' During this process, water-rich material is accreted by the…
We investigate the possibility that the Moon's formation impact was triggered by an early dynamical instability of the giant planets. We consider the well-studied "jumping Jupiter" hypothesis for the solar system's instability, where…
The observed population of Hot Jupiters displays a stunning variety of physical properties, including a wide range of densities and core sizes for a given planetary mass. Motivated by the observational sample, this paper studies the…
It is generally accepted that silicate-metal (`rocky') planet formation relies on coagulation from a mixture of sub-Mars sized planetary embryos and (smaller) planetesimals that dynamically emerge from the evolving circum-solar disc in the…
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…
The core-accretion and disk instability models have so far been used to explain planetary formation. These models have different conditions, such as planet mass, disk mass, and metallicity for formation of gas giants. The core-accretion…
Migration of planetesimals from the feeding zone of the terrestrial planets, which was divided into seven regions depending on the distance to the Sun, was simulated. The influence of gravity of all planets was taken into account. In some…
Planets and the stars they orbit are born from the same cloud of gas and dust, and the primordial compositions of rocky exoplanets have been assumed to have iron and refractory abundance ratios consistent with their host star. To test this…
Models of terrestrial planet formation for our solar system have been successful in producing planets with masses and orbits similar to those of Venus and Earth. However, these models have generally failed to produce Mars-sized objects…
The solar system's terrestrial planets are thought to have accreted over millions of years out of a sea of smaller embryos and planetesimals. Because it is impossible to know the surface density profile for solids and size frequency…