Related papers: Strength In Diversity: Small Bodies as the Most Im…

The practical distinctions between asteroids and comets, viewed as products of accretion on either side of the snow line, are less clear-cut than previously understood. In this chapter, we discuss the numerous solar system populations which…

The aim of the chapter is to summarize our understanding of the compositional distribution across the different reservoirs of small bodies (main belt asteroids, giant planet trojans, irregular satellites of the giant planets, TNOs, comets).…

Our galaxy is full with planets. We now know that planets and planetary systems are diverse and come with different sizes, masses and compositions, as well as various orbital architectures. Although there has been great progress in…

The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…

Diversity measurement underpins the study of biological systems, but measures used vary across disciplines. Despite their common use and broad utility, no unified framework has emerged for measuring, comparing and partitioning diversity.…

Our main purpose here is to study some qualitative aspects of space and time. These include the notion of space and time regarded as the containers of respectively bodies and events, the divisibility of space, and the unrepeatability of…

Planetary systems that orbit white dwarf stars can be studied via spectroscopic observations of the stars themselves. Numerous white dwarfs are seen to have accreted mostly rocky minor planets, the remnants of which are present in the…

We recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…

Debris disks are exoplanetary systems containing planets, minor bodies (such as asteroids and comets) and debris dust. Unseen planets are presumed to perturb the minor bodies into crossing orbits, generating small dust grains that are…

Stars are mostly found in binary and multiple systems, as at least 50% of all solar-like stars have companions - a fraction that goes up to 100% for the most massive stars. Moreover, a large fraction of them will interact in some way or…

Super-Earths, objects slightly larger than Earth and slightly smaller than Uranus, have found a special place in exoplanetary science. As a new class of planetary bodies, these objects have challenged models of planet formation at both ends…

Having discovered that Earth-sized planets are common, we are now embarking on a journey to determine if Earth-like planets are also common. Finding Earth-like planets is one of the most compelling endeavors of the 21st century - leading us…

For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…

The study of planets outside our solar system may lead to major advances in our understanding of the Earth, and provide insight into the universal set of rules by which planets form and evolve. To achieve these goals requires applying…

The scattering of small bodies by planets is an important dynamical process in planetary systems. We present an analytical model to describe this process using the simplifying assumption that each particle's dynamics is dominated by a…

With planets orbiting stars, a planetary mass function should not be seen as a low-mass extension of the stellar mass function, but a proper formalism needs to take care of the fact that the statistical properties of planet populations are…

The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…

Super-Earths, a class of planetary bodies with masses ranging from a few Earth-masses to slightly smaller than Uranus, have recently found a special place in the exoplanetary science. Being slightly larger than a typical terrestrial planet,…

This document covers five broad topics from theory of small bodies: planetesimal formation, cosmochemistry, thermal evolution, collisions and dynamics. Each of these topics is described in a separate section, where we prioritize selected…

Planetary rings are the only nearby astrophysical disks, and the only disks that have been investigated by spacecraft. Although there are significant differences between rings and other disks, chiefly the large planet/ring mass ratio that…