Related papers: Modification of the composition and density of Mer…
Intense bombardment of solar system planets in the immediate aftermath of protoplanetary disk dissipation has played a key role in their atmospheric evolution. During this epoch, energetic collisions will have removed significant masses of…
Aims. Particles ejected from the lunar surface via hypervelocity impacts form a torus between the Earth and the Moon. According to our previous study (Yang et al., A\&A, 659, A120), among them about $2.3\times10^{-4}\,\mathrm{kg/s}$…
The MESSENGER mission sought to discover what physical processes determined Mercury's high metal to silicate ratio. Instead, the mission has discovered multiple anomalous characteristics about our innermost planet. The lack of FeO and the…
Investigating in the laboratory the process of matter accretion onto forming stars through scaled experiments is important in order to better understand star and planetary systems formation and evolution. Such experiments can indeed…
Much of the Earth was built by high-energy impacts of planetesimals and embryos, many of these impactors already differentiated, with metallic cores of their own. Geochemical data provide critical information on the timing of accretion and…
Mercury is the target of two space missions: MESSENGER (NASA) which orbit insertion is planned for March 2011, and ESA/JAXA BepiColombo, that should be launched in 2014. Their instruments will observe the surface of the planet with a high…
The planetary perturbations on Mercury's orbit lead to long-period forced librations of Mercury's mantle. These librations have previously been studied for a planet with two layers: a mantle and a liquid core. Here, we calculate how the…
Planet accretion onto solar type stars may significantly change the stellar atmospheric abundances of 6Li and 7Li if it takes place after the star has arrived at the main sequence. Ingestion of planets at an earlier phase will not affect…
This work is the first attempt to describe the multi-dimensional structure of accreting young stars based on fully compressible time implicit multi-dimensional hydrodynamics simulations. One major motivation is to analyse the validity of…
A quarter of DA white dwarfs are metal polluted, yet elements heavier than helium sink down through the stellar atmosphere on timescales of days. Hence, these white dwarfs must be currently accreting material containing heavy elements.…
We use a hybrid numerical approach to simulate the formation of the Moon from an impact-generated disk, consisting of a fluid model for the disk inside the Roche limit and an N-body code to describe accretion outside the Roche limit. As the…
As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of solar system development and how planets and exoplanets form and evolve in close proximity to…
During a giant eruption of a very massive star in the binary system, the companion star can accrete a large amount of mass that can change its properties and potentially its subsequent evolution. The effect depends on the companion mass,…
We investigate the influence of impacts of large planetesimals and small planetary embryos on the early Martian surface on the hydrodynamic escape of an early steam atmosphere that is exposed to the high soft X-ray and EUV flux of the young…
A number of recently discovered extrasolar planet candidates have surprisingly small orbits, which may indicate that considerable orbital migration takes place in protoplanetary systems. A natural consequence of orbital migration is for a…
A non negligible fraction of white dwarf stars show the presence of heavy elements in their atmospheres. The most accepted explanation for this contamination is the accretion of material coming from tidally disrupted planetesimals, which…
Radiometric dating indicates that Mars accreted in the first ~4 Myr of solar system formation, which coincides with the formation and possible migration of Jupiter. While nebular gas from the protoplanetary disk was still present, Jupiter…
We perform numerical simulations to investigate high-power wind accretion in massive binary systems undergoing enhanced mass-loss episodes. The primary star is taken in the mass range $M_{1} = 60$--$90\,\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$, while the…
During the formation of rocky planets, the surface environments of growing protoplanets were dramatically different from those of present-day planets. The release of gravitational energy during accretion would have maintained a molten…
Observations and meteorites indicate that the Martian materials are enigmatically distributed within the inner solar system. A mega impact on Mars creating a Martian hemispheric dichotomy and the Martian moons can potentially eject Martian…