Related papers: Explaining the low luminosity of Uranus: A self-co…
Earth's inner core exhibits an unusually high Poisson's ratio and noticeable elastic anisotropy. The mechanisms responsible for these features are critical for understanding the evolution of the Earth but remain unclear. This study…
In planetary nebulae, abundances of oxygen and other heavy elements derived from optical recombination lines are systematically higher than those derived from collisionally excited lines. We investigate the hypothesis that the destruction…
The origins of Uranus and Neptune are not fully understood. Their inclined rotation axes -- obliquities -- suggest that they experienced giant impacts during their formation histories. Simulations modeling their accretion from giant impacts…
Venus shares many similarities with the Earth, but concomitantly, some of its features are extremely original. This is especially true for its atmosphere, where high pressures and temperatures are found at the ground level. In these…
The impact of the inner structure and thermal history of planets on their observable features, such as luminosity or magnetic field, crucially depends on the poorly known heat and charge transport properties of their internal layers. The…
HST images, MUSE maps of emission-lines, and an atlas of high velocity resolution emission-line spectra have been used to establish for the firrst time correlations of the electron temperature, electron density, radial velocity, turbulence,…
The Juno mission has revolutionized and challenged our understanding of Jupiter. As Juno transitioned to its extended mission, we review the major findings of Jupiter's internal structure relevant to understanding Jupiter's formation and…
The Mars thermosphere holds clues to the evolution of the Martian climate, and has practical implications for spacecraft visiting Mars, which often use it for aerobraking upon arrival, or for landers, which must pass through it.…
Lithium is an excellent tracer of mixing in stars as it is destroyed (by nuclear reactions) at a temperature around $\sim 2.5\times 10^6$ K. The lithium destruction zone is typically located in the radiative region of a star. If the…
The currently available, detailed properties (e.g., isotopic ratios) of solar system planets may provide guides for constructing better approaches of exoplanet characterization. With this motivation, we explore how the measured values of…
The equilibrium composition of neutron star matter is achieved through weak interactions (direct and inverse beta decays), which proceed on relatively long time scales. If the density of a matter element is perturbed, it will relax to the…
The Ice Giants represent a unique and relatively poorly characterized class of planets that have been largely unexplored since the brief Voyager 2 flyby in the late 1980's. Uranus is particularly enigmatic, due to its extreme axial tilt,…
Models of the Sun's long-term evolution suggest that its luminosity was substantially reduced 2-4 billion years ago, which is inconsistent with substantial evidence for warm and wet conditions in the geological records of both ancient Earth…
Brightness-temperature fluctuations in the redshifted 21-cm background from the cosmic dark ages are generated by irregularities in the gas-density distribution and can then be used to determine the statistical properties of density…
We examine the cosmological and astrophysical signatures of a "dark baryon," a neutral fermion that mixes with the neutron. As the mixing is through a higher-dimensional operator at the quark level, production of the dark baryon at high…
Substellar objects have extremely long life-spans. The cosmological consequence for older objects are low abundances of heavy elements, which results in a wide distribution of objects over metallicity, hence over age. Within their cool…
The nature of sub-Neptunes remains unknown due to degeneracies in interior structure solutions. However, a statistical set of small planets with measured masses and radii can be used to test the planet formation theory prediction of large…
We investigate whether the surfaces of the classical moons of Uranus are compositionally stratified, with a thin veneer of mostly tiny H2O ice grains (<= 2 micron diameters) mantling a lower layer composed of larger grains of H2O ice, dark…
Storms operated by moist convection and the condensation of $\rm CH_{4}$ or $\rm H_{2}S$ have been observed on Uranus and Neptune. However, the mechanism of cloud formation, thermal structure, and mixing efficiency of ice giant weather…
Venus' mass and radius are similar to those of Earth. However, dissimilarities in atmospheric properties, geophysical activity and magnetic field generation could hint towards significant differences in the chemical composition and interior…