Related papers: Cascading parallel fractures on Enceladus
We suggest that the irregular structure in Saturn's B ring arises from the formation of shear-free ring-particle assemblies of up to ~100 km in radial extent. The characteristic scale of the irregular structure is set by the competition…
Enceladus is among the most intriguing bodies in the solar system due to its astrobiological potential. Determining the extent and duration of habitability (i.e., sustained habitability) requires characterizing the interior properties and…
Core Accretion (CA), the de-facto accepted theory of planet formation, requires formation of massive solid cores as a prerequisite for assembly of gas giant planets. The observed metallicity correlations of exoplanets are puzzling in the…
Both observations and simulations suggest that the solar filament eruption is closely related to magnetic flux emergence. It is thought that the eruption is triggered by magnetic reconnection between the filament and the emerging flux.…
Certain regions of Saturn's rings exhibit periodic opacity variations with characteristic radial wavelengths of up to a few hundred meters that have been attributed to viscous overstabilities. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer…
Scattered light images of transition discs in the near-infrared often show non-axisymmetric structures in the form of wide-open spiral arms in addition to their characteristic low-opacity inner gap region. We study self-gravitating discs…
Evidence for wave-like corrugations are well established in the Milky Way and in nearby disc galaxies. These were originally detected as a displacement of the interstellar medium about the midplane, either in terms of vertical distance or…
The high stellar densities in young compact star clusters, such as the star cluster R 136 in the 30 Doradus region, may lead to a large number of stellar collisions. Such collisions were recently found to be much more frequent than previous…
The InSight mission has measured Mars' seismicity since February 2018 and has allowed to investigate tectonics on another planet. Seismic data shows that most of the widely distributed surface faults are not seismically active, and that…
At the poles of Jupiter, cyclonic vortices are clustered together in patterns made up of equilateral triangles called vortex crystals. Such patterns are seen in laboratory flows but never before in a planetary atmosphere, where the planet's…
A number of Kepler planet pairs lie just wide of first-order mean motion resonances (MMRs). Tides have been frequently proposed to explain these pileups, but it is still an ongoing discussion. We contribute to this discussion by calculating…
Magnetic reconnection is commonly considered as a mechanism of solar (eruptive) flares. A deeper study of this scenario reveals, however, a number of open issues. Among them is the fundamental question, how the magnetic energy is…
Membrane tubes (spicules) arise in cells, or artificial membranes, in the nonlinear deformation regime due to, e.g. the growth of microtubules, actin filaments or sickle hemoglobin fibers towards a membrane. We calculate the axial force…
Granular packings of non-convex or elongated particles can form free-standing structures like walls or arches. For some particle shapes, such as staples, the rigidity arises from interlocking of pairs of particles, but the origins of…
A star cluster in a galactic nucleus sinks toward the galactic center due to dynamical friction. As it spirals inward, the cluster loses mass due to stellar evolution, relaxation driven evaporation, and tidal stripping, eventually…
Chondrules are mm-sized spherules found throughout primitive, chondritic meteorites. Flash heating by a shock front is the leading explanation of their formation. However, identifying a mechanism for creating shock fronts inside the solar…
Imaging microwave observations of an eruptive, partially occulted solar flare on 18 April 2001 suggest that the global structure of the event can be described by the helical kink instability of a twisted magnetic flux rope. This model is…
Approximately half of the planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are in systems where just a single planet transits its host star, and the remaining planets are observed to be in multi-planet systems. Recent analyses have reported a…
(abridged) We perform hydrodynamical simulations of minor-merger induced gas sloshing and the subsequent formation of cold fronts in the Virgo cluster. We show for the first time that sloshing reproduces all characteristics of the observed…
Context. Regularly-spaced, star-forming regions along the spiral arms of nearby galaxies provide insight into the early stages and initial conditions of star formation. The regular separation of these star-forming regions suggests spiral…