Related papers: Ice Giant Atmospheric Science
In the Solar System giant planets come in two flavours: 'gas giants' (Jupiter and Saturn) with massive gas envelopes and 'ice giants' (Uranus and Neptune) with much thinner envelopes around their cores. It is poorly understood how these two…
Planets intermediate in size between the Earth and Neptune, and orbiting closer to their host stars than Mercury does the Sun, are the most common type of planet revealed by exoplanet surveys over the last quarter century. Results from…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
Models of thermal emission of neutron stars, presumably formed in their atmospheres, are needed to infer the surface temperatures, magnetic fields, chemical composition, and neutron star masses and radii from the observational data. This…
The fates of planetary systems provide unassailable insights into their formation and represent rich cross-disciplinary dynamical laboratories. Mounting observations of post-main-sequence planetary systems necessitate a complementary level…
This study, placed in the context of the preparation for the Uranus Orbiter Probe mission, aims to predict the bulk volatile compositions of Uranus and Neptune. Using a protoplanetary disk model, it examines the evolution of trace species…
At the far reaches of the outer Solar System, the ice giants remain the last class of planets yet to be studied using orbiters. The 2023-2032 Planetary Science Decadal Survey has underscored the importance of the ice giants in understanding…
This White Paper describes the opportunities for discovery of Jupiter-mass objects with 300K atmospheres. The discovery and characterization of such cold objects is vital for understanding the low-mass terminus of the initial mass function…
I discuss the feasibility of a conceptual space-based neutrino detector that utilizes the Ice Giants as Targets for Galactic Neutrinos. The purpose of this research stems from the concept of wanting to find a new method of observing the…
We study the orbital evolution of the 4 giant planets of our solar system in a gas disk. Our investigation extends the previous works by Masset and Snellgrove (2001) and Morbidelli and Crida (2007, MC07), which focussed on the dynamics of…
The discovery of many giant planets in close-in orbits and the effect of planetary and stellar tides in their subsequent orbital decay have been extensively studied in the context of planetary formation and evolution theories. Planets…
Many evolutionary models of giant exoplanets still rely on simplifying assumptions that are no longer adequate given detailed constraints from Jupiter, Saturn, and modern exoplanet observations. Here, we identify the key physical…
Noble gases provide tracers of cosmic provenance that are accessible to a future Uranus Atmospheric Probe. Argon and krypton are expected to be well-mixed on Uranus with respect to H$_2$ and He, although condensation at the winter pole may…
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…
The equatorial jets dominating the dynamics of the Jovian planets exhibit two distinct types of zonal flows: strongly eastward in the gas giants (superrotation) and strongly westward in the ice giants (subrotation). Existing theories…
Despite the revolution in our knowledge resulting from the detection of planets around mature stars, we know almost nothing about planets orbiting young stars because rapid rotation and active photospheres preclude detection by radial…
Few scientific discoveries have captured the public imagination like the explosion of exoplanetary science during the past two decades. This work has fundamentally changed our picture of Earth's place in the Universe and led NASA to make…
We are now on a clear trajectory for improvements in exoplanet observations that will revolutionize our ability to characterize their atmospheric structure, composition, and circulation, from gas giants to rocky planets. However, exoplanet…
The exploration of carbon-to-oxygen ratios has yielded intriguing insights into the composition of close-in giant exoplanets, giving rise to a distinct classification: carbon-rich planets, characterized by a carbon-to-oxygen ratio $\ge$ 1…
We present updated non-adiabatic and inhomogeneous evolution models for Uranus and Neptune, employing an interior composition of methane, ammonia, water, and rocks. Following formation trends of the gas giants, Uranus and Neptune formation…