Related papers: Packing Moons Inside the Earth
We have studied planetary systems which are similar to the Solar System and built up from three inner rocky planets (Venus, Earth, Mars) and two outer gas giants. The stability of the orbits of the inner planets is discussed in the cases of…
Since the discovery of the first exoplanets, those most adequate for life to begin and evolve have been sought. Due to observational bias, however, most of the discovered planets so far are gas giants, precluding their habitability.…
Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by…
The exquisite photometric precision of the Kepler space telescope now puts the detection of extrasolar moons at the horizon. Here, we firstly review observational and analytical techniques that have recently been proposed to find exomoons.…
Almost all the planets of our solar system have moons. Each planetary system has however unique characteristics. The Martian system has not one single big moon like the Earth, not tens of moons of various sizes like for the giant planets,…
We look at what astronomy from the Moon might be like in the visible over the next few decades. The Moon offers the possibility of installing large telescopes or interferometers with instruments larger than those on orbiting telescopes. We…
The study on the relationship between the spheres and voids in packing system suggests that the edge effect at the interface between the container and the particles is an important factor lowering the packing ratio. To pack spheres in a…
The Moon is our future. It may seem like a chimera with a projected cost in excess of 100 billion\$, and counting, dispensed on ARTEMIS with little to show to date. However it is the ideal site for the largest telescopes that we can dream…
Inversive geometry can be used to generate exactly self-similar space-filling sphere packings. We present a construction method in two dimensions and generalize it to search for packings in higher dimensions. We newly discover 29…
The search for exomoons in time-domain photometric data has to-date generally consisted of fitting transit models that are comprised of a planet hosting a single moon. This simple model has its advantages, but it may not be particularly…
The circumplanetary environments in our Solar System host a stunning array of moon and ring systems. Study of these environs has yielded valuable insights into planetary system formation and evolution, and there is every reason to believe…
The aim in packing problems is to decide if a given set of pieces can be placed inside a given container. A packing problem is defined by the types of pieces and containers to be handled, and the motions that are allowed to move the pieces.…
Packings of identical objects have fascinated both scientists and laymen alike for centuries, in particular the sphere packings and the packings of identical regular tetrahedra. Mathematicians have tried for centuries to determine the…
We discuss problems of planetesimal migration in the emerging Solar System and exoplanetary systems. Protoplanetary disk evolution models and the formation of planets are considered. The formation of the Moon and of the asteroid and…
The planets within compact multi-planet systems tend to have similar sizes, masses, and orbital period ratios, like "peas in a pod". This pattern was detected when considering planets with radii between 1 and 4 $R_\oplus$. However, these…
Probing the interiors of the gas giant planets in our Solar System is not an easy task. It requires a set of accurate measurements combined with theoretical models that are used to infer the planetary composition and its depth dependence.…
The physical state of the lunar soil in the permanently shadowed craters of the moon is inferred from experimental investigation. The permanently shadowed craters do not undergo the same thermal cycling experienced by other parts of the…
In an Euclidean $d$-space, the container problem asks to pack $n$ equally sized spheres into a minimal dilate of a fixed container. If the container is a smooth convex body and $d\geq 2$ we show that solutions to the container problem can…
Since the discovery of a planet transiting its host star in the year 2000, thousands of additional exoplanets and exoplanet candidates have been detected, mostly by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Some of them are almost as small as the…
In the simplest cosmological models consistent with General Relativity, the total volume of the Universe is either finite or infinite, depending on whether or not the spatial curvature is positive. Current data suggest that the curvature is…