Related papers: Explaining the low luminosity of Uranus: A self-co…
The origin of the high inclination of Uranus' spin-axis (Uranus' obliquity) is one of the great unanswered questions about the Solar system. Giant planets are believed to form with nearly zero obliquity, and it has been shown that the…
One-dimensional (vertical) models of planetary atmospheres typically balance the net solar and internal energy fluxes against the net thermal radiative and convective heat fluxes to determine an equilibrium thermal structure. Thus,simple…
Ultra-cool brown dwarfs offer a unique window into understanding substellar atmospheric physics and chemistry. Their strong molecular absorption bands at infrared wavelengths, Jupiter-like radii, cool temperatures, and lack of complicating…
Volatility-dependent fractionation of the rock-forming elements at high temperatures is an early, widespread process during formation of the earliest solids in protoplanetary disks. Equilibrium condensation calculations allow prediction of…
Quantitative estimates of the basic properties of the circumgalactic medium(CGM), such as its density and metallicity, depend on the spectrum of incident UV background radiation. Models of UV background are known to have large variations,…
Venus's past climate evolution is uncertain. General circulation model simulations permit a habitable climate as late as ~0.7 Ga, and there is suggestive-albeit inconclusive-evidence for previous liquid water from surface geomorphology and…
The evolution of stars and planets is mostly controlled by the properties of their atmosphere. This is particularly true in the case of exoplanets close to their stars, for which one has to account both for an (often intense) irradiation…
A very fast iterative method is presented to calculate the internal constitution of the outer crust of a cold nonaccreted neutron star, making use of very accurate analytical formulas for the transition pressures between adjacent crustal…
The recent observation of coherent backscattering (CBS) of light by atoms has emphasized the key role of the velocity spread and of the quantum internal structure of the atoms. Firstly, using highly resonant scatterers imposes very low…
Hot Jupiters receive strong stellar irradiation, producing equilibrium temperatures of $1000 - 2500 \ \mathrm{Kelvin}$. Incoming irradiation directly heats just their thin outer layer, down to pressures of $\sim 0.1 \ \mathrm{bars}$. In…
There have been many proposed explanations for the larger-than-expected radii of some transiting hot Jupiters, including either stellar or orbital energy deposition deep in the atmosphere or deep in the interior. In this paper, we explore…
The boundaries of the Uranian epsilon, alpha, and beta rings can be fitted by Keplerian ellipses. The pair of ellipses that outline a given ring share a common line of apsides. Apse alignment is surprising because the quadrupole moment of…
The composition of Jupiter and the primordial distribution of the heavy elements are determined by its formation history. As a result, in order to constrain the primordial internal structure of Jupiter the growth of the core and the…
In order to characterize giant exoplanets and better understand their origin, knowledge of how the planet's composition depends on its mass and stellar environment is required. In this work, we simulate the thermal evolution of gaseous…
Among exoplanets, the small-size population constitutes the dominant one, with a diversity of properties and compositions ranging from rocky to gas dominated envelope. While a large fraction of them have masses and radii similar to or…
A prevailing open problem in planetary nebulae research, and photoionized gaseous nebulae research at large, is the systematic discrepancies in electron temperatures and ionic abundances as derived from recombination and collisionally…
Despite direct observations favoring a low mass density, a critical density universe with a neutrino component of dark matter provides the best existing model to explain the observed structure of the universe over more than three orders of…
We study the hypothesis of high metallicity clumps being responsible for the abundance discrepancy found in planetary nebulae between the values obtained from recombination and collisionaly excited lines. We generate grids of…
The origin of the hot phase of the early universe remains so far an unsolved puzzle. A viable option is entropy production through the decays of heavy Majorana neutrinos whose lifetimes determine the initial temperature. We show that…
C-H-N-O system is central for organic chemistry and biochemistry, and plays a major role in planetary science (dominating the composition of "ice giants" Uranus and Neptune). The inexhaustible chemical diversity of this system at normal…