Related papers: Thermal Evolution of Uranus with a Frozen Interior
The impact heat accumulated during the late stage of planetary accretion can melt a significant part or even the entire mantle of a terrestrial body, giving rise to a global magma ocean. [...] Assuming fractional crystallization of the…
Existence of subsurface oceans on the satellites of the giant planets and Trans-Neptunian objects has been predicted for some time. Oceans on icy worlds exert a considerable influence on the dynamics of the ice-ocean system and, because of…
Atmospheric escape from close-in Neptunes and hot Jupiters around sun-like stars driven by extreme ultraviolet (EUV) irradiation plays an important role in the evolution of exo-planets and in shaping their ensemble properties. Intermediate…
The formation of Saturn is modeled by detailed numerical simulations according to the core-nucleated accretion scenario. Previous models are enhanced to include the dissolution of accreting planetesimals, composed of water ice, rock, and…
We simulate Venus' evolution with a coupled one-dimensional solar-atmosphere-lithosphere-mantle-core model to predict currently unobservable features and its eruptive mass flux. We identified four distinct evolutionary pathways that…
We constructed a 6-degrees of freedom rotational model of Titan as a 3-layer body consisting of a rigid core, a fluid global ocean, and a floating ice shell. The ice shell exhibits partially-compensated lateral thickness variations in order…
The outer giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, pose a challenge to theories of planet formation. They exist in a region of the Solar System where long dynamical timescales and a low primordial density of material would have conspired to make…
The gravitational-wave and accretion driven evolution of neutron stars in low mass X-ray binaries and similar systems is analyzed, while the amplitude of the radiating perturbation (here assumed to be an r-mode) remains small. If most of…
The seasonal evolution of Saturn's polar atmospheric temperatures and hydrocarbon composition is derived from a decade of Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) 7-16 $\mu$m thermal infrared spectroscopy. We construct a…
Solar evolutionary models are thus far unable to reproduce spectroscopic, helioseismic, and neutrino constraints consistently, resulting in the so-called solar modeling problem. In parallel, planet formation models predict that the evolving…
Over the past decades, global geodynamical models have been used to investigate the thermal evolution of terrestrial planets. With the increase of computational power and improvement of numerical techniques, these models have become more…
We present large scale electronic structure based molecular dynamics simulations of liquid methane at planetary conditions. In particular, we address the controversy of whether or not the interior of Uranus and Neptune consists of diamond.…
Modeling the interior of a planet is difficult because the small number of measured parameters is insufficient to constrain the many variables involved in describing the interior structure and composition. One solution is to invoke…
The time evolution of thermal and thermo-reactive instabilities of primordial gas in the presence of ionizing UV radiation is studied. We obtain conditions (depending on density, temperature, and UV radiation intensity) favorable for the…
HST/STIS observations of Uranus in 2015 show that the depletion of upper tropospheric methane has been relatively stable and that the polar region has been brightening over time as a result of increased aerosol scattering. This…
Dark matter annihilations can generate significant amounts of internal heat inside planets if dark matter consists mainly of particles with nuclear cross sections in the micro-barn range or larger (SIMPs). By considering a detailed model of…
The gravity field of a giant planet is typically our best window into its interior structure and composition. Through comparison of a model planet's calculated gravitational potential with the observed potential, inferences can be made…
As mature neutron stars are cold (on the relevant temperature scale), one has to carefully consider the state of matter in their interior. The outer kilometer or so is expected to freeze to form an elastic crust of increasingly neutron-rich…
We present results examining the fate of the Trojan clouds produced in our previous work. We find that the stability of Neptunian Trojans seems to be strongly correlated to their initial post-migration orbital elements, with those objects…
Sub-Neptunes are the most common type of detected exoplanet, yet their observed masses and radii are degenerate with several interior structures. One possibility is that sub-Neptunes have silicate/iron interiors and H$_2$-dominated…