Related papers: Kuiper belt: formation and evolution
It appears that at least several percent of large Kuiper belt objects are members of wide binaries. Physical collisions are too infrequent to account for their formation. Collisionless gravitational interactions are more promising. These…
We investigate whether coagulation models of planet formation can explain the observed size distributions of transneptunian objects (TNOs). Analyzing published and new calculations, we demonstrate robust relations between the size of the…
The dust measured in debris disks traces the position of planetesimal belts. In our Solar System, we are also able to measure the largest planetesimals directly and can extrapolate down to make an estimate of the dust. The zodiacal dust…
We perform simulations here that include the gravitational effects of the primordial planetesimal belt consisting of ~10^5 massive bodies. In our simulations, Neptune unlocks from resonance with the other giant planets and begins to migrate…
We study the efficiency of forming large bodies, starting from a sea of equal-sized planetesimals. This is likely one of the earlier steps of planet formation and relevant for the formation of the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt and…
The trans-Neptunian region of the solar system exhibits an intricate dynamical structure, much of which can be explained by an instability-driven orbital history of the giant planets. However, the origins of a highly inclined, and in…
The orbital distribution of transneptunian objects (TNOs) in the distant Kuiper Belt (with semimajor axes beyond the 2:1 resonance, roughly $a$=50-100 au) provides constraints on the dynamical history of the outer solar system. Recent…
Binaries have played a crucial role many times in the history of modern astronomy and are doing so again in the rapidly evolving exploration of the Kuiper Belt. The large fraction of transneptunian objects that are binary or multiple, 48…
By examining the absolute magnitude (H) distributions (hereafter HD) of the cold and hot populations in the Kuiper belt and of the Trojans of Jupiter, we find evidence that the Trojans have been captured from the outer part of the…
Detecting heat from minor planets in the outer solar system is challenging, yet it is the most efficient means for constraining the albedos and sizes of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and their progeny, the Centaur objects. These physical…
High-multiplicity Kepler systems (referred to as Kepler multis) are often tightly packed and may be on the verge of instability. Many systems of this type could have experienced past instabilities, where the compact orbits and often low…
The asteroid belt is the leftover of the original planetesimal population in the inner solar system. However, currently the asteroids have orbits with all possible values of eccentricities and inclinations compatible with long-term…
A large fraction of 100-km-class low-inclination objects in the classical Kuiper Belt (KB) are binaries with comparable mass and wide separation of components. A favored model for their formation was capture during the coagulation growth of…
A model that computes the secular evolution of a gravitating disk-planet system is developed. The disk is treated as a set of gravitating rings, with the rings'/planets' time-evolution governed by the classical Laplace-Lagrange solution for…
The Kuiper belt includes tens of thousands of large bodies and millions of smaller objects. The main part of the belt objects is located in the annular zone between 39.4 au and 47.8 au from the Sun, the boundaries correspond to the average…
The Kepler mission enabled us to look at the intrinsic population of exoplanets within our galaxy. In period-radius space, the distribution of the intrinsic population of planets contains structure that can trace planet formation and…
The process by which a system of non-luminous bodies form around a star is fundamental to understanding the origins of our own solar system and how it fits into the context of other systems we have begun to study around other stars. Some…
In this paper, we present the most comprehensive study to date on Neptune's mean-motion resonances (MMRs) in the distant Kuiper belt from 50 to 100 AU. Over 200 resonant Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) have been identified in this region,…
We numerically investigate the possibility that a close stellar encounter could account for the high inclinations of the Kuiper belt, as originally proposed by Ida, Larwood and Burkert, however we consider encounters with pericenters within…
Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are icy/rocky bodies that move beyond the orbit of Neptune in a region known as the trans-Neptunian belt (or Edgeworth-Kuiper belt). In contrast to the predictions of accretion models that feature…