Related papers: Extrasolar planets: from dust to new worlds

We know that giant planets played a crucial role in the making of our Solar System. The discovery of giant planets orbiting other stars is a formidable opportunity to learn more about these objects, what is their composition, how various…

Over the past three decades, we have witnessed one of the great revolutions in our understanding of the cosmos - the dawn of the Exoplanet Era. Where once we knew of just one planetary system (the Solar system), we now know of thousands,…

This article deals with the most recent developments in the field of exoplanetary science connecting the interior of the planets with their habitability. In this issue, I have specified the importance of interior dynamics and briefly…

Studies of transiting extra-solar planets are of key importance for understanding the nature of planets outside our Solar System, because their densities can be determined, constraining of what the planets are made of. Using the data…

Searching for life in the universe will make use of several large space missions in the visible and thermal infrared, each with increasing spectral and angular resolution. They will require long-term planning over the coming decades. We…

The atmospheres of exoplanets reveal all their properties beyond mass, radius, and orbit. Based on bulk densities, we know that exoplanets larger than 1.5 Earth radii must have gaseous envelopes, hence atmospheres. We discuss contemporary…

The search for extrasolar planets in the past decades has shown that planets abound in the Solar neighborhood. While we are still missing an Earth twin, the forthcoming space missions and ground-based instrumentation are already driven to…

With more than 5500 detected exoplanets, the search for life is entering a new era. Using life on Earth as our guide, we look beyond green landscapes to expand our ability to detect signs of surface life on other worlds. While oxygenic…

Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…

Exoplanets are often found with short periods or high eccentricities, and multiple-planet systems are often in resonance. They require dynamical theories that describe more extreme motions than those of the relatively placid planetary…

We discuss a new class of exoplanets that appear to be emitting a tail of dusty effluents. These disintegrating planets are found close to their host stars and have very hot, and likely molten, surfaces. The properties of the dust should…

The number of exoplanets detected using gravitational microlensing technique is currently larger than 200, which enables population studies. Microlensing is uniquely sensitive to low-mass planets orbiting at separations of several…

The terrestrial and gas-giant planets in our solar system may represent some prototypes for planets around other stars; the exoplanets because most stars have similar overall elemental abundances as our sun. The solar system planets…

Atmospheric spectroscopy provides a window into the properties of exoplanets. However, the physical interpretation of retrieved data and its implications for the internal properties of exoplanets remains nebulous. This letter addresses…

Among the hundred or so extrasolar planets discovered to date, 19 are orbiting a component of a double or multiple star system. In this paper, we discuss the properties of these planets and compare them to the characteristics of planets…

Here, we present a simple solution to problems that have plagued (extra)"galactic" astronomers and cosmologists over the last century. We show that "galaxy" formation, dark matter, and the tension in the expansion of the universe can all be…

For much of human history we have wondered how our solar system formed, and whether there are any other planets like ours around other stars. Only in the last 20 years have we had direct evidence for the existence of exoplanets, with the…

The ultimate goal of astrobiology is to determine the distribution and diversity of life in the universe. But as the word "biosignature" suggests, what will be detected is not life itself, but an observation implicating a particular process…

The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…

For the last few decades the study of disks around stars young and old and of different types have progressed significantly. During the same time a completely new discipline, the study of exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than our…