Related papers: A Note on Planet Size and Cooling Rate

Plate tectonics is a geophysical process currently unique to Earth, has an important role in regulating the Earth's climate, and may be better understood by identifying rocky planets outside our solar system with tectonic activity. The key…

Feedbacks that can destabilize the climates of synchronously-rotating rocky planets may arise on planets with strong day-night surface temperature contrasts. Earth-like habitable-zone (HZ) planets maintain stable surface liquid water over…

A planet orbiting in a disk of planetesimals can experience an instability in which it migrates to smaller orbital radii. Resonant interactions between the planet and planetesimals remove angular momentum from the planetesimals, increasing…

The climate and circulation of a terrestrial planet are governed by, among other things, the distance to its host star, its size, rotation rate, obliquity, atmospheric composition and gravity. Here we explore the effects of the last of…

Models of thermal evolution, crustal production, and CO$_2$ cycling are used to constrain the prospects for habitability of rocky planets, with Earth-like size and composition, in the stagnant lid regime. Specifically, we determine the…

Recently discovered exoplanets on close-in orbits should have surface temperatures of 100's to 1000's of K. They are likely tidally locked and synchronously rotating around their parent stars and, if an atmosphere is absent, have surface…

After finding more planets than expected at the shortest period, there has been an effort to explain their numbers by weak tidal friction. However, we find that the strength of tidal dissipation that would produce the occurence distribution…

Our knowledge of planets' orbital dynamics, which was based on Solar System studies, has been challenged by the diversity of exoplanetary systems. Around cool and ultra cool dwarfs, the influence of tides on the orbital and spin evolution…

The ice shell and subsurface ocean on icy worlds are strongly coupled together -- heat and salinity flux from the ice shell induced by the ice thickness gradient drives circulation in the ocean, and in turn, the heat transport by ocean…

A small planet is not necessarily a terrestrial planet. Planets that form beyond the snow line with too little mass to seed rapid gas accretion (<~ 10 Earth masses) should be rich in volatile ices like water and ammonia. Some of these…

Earth-mass planets are expected to have atmospheres and experience thermal tides raised by the host star. These tides transfer energy to the planet that can counter the dissipation from bodily tides. Indeed, even a relatively thin…

What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…

Planets with masses between 0.1 - 10 M_earth are believed to host dense atmospheres. These atmospheres can play an important role on the planet's spin evolution, since thermal atmospheric tides, driven by the host star, may counterbalance…

We consider the evolution of a system containing a population of massive planets formed rapidly through a fragmentation process occurring on a scale on the order of 100 au and a lower mass planet that assembles in a disc on a much longer…

The presence of giant planets influences potentially habitable worlds in numerous ways. Massive celestial neighbors can facilitate the formation of planetary cores and modify the influx of asteroids and comets towards Earth-analogs later…

We generalize the theory of the inhomogeneity effect to enable comparison among different inhomogeneous planets. A metric of inhomogeneity based on the cumulative distribution function is applied to investigate the dependence of planetary…

The equilibrium rotation rate of a planet is determined by the sum of torques acting on its solid body. For planets with atmospheres, the dominant torques are usually the gravitational tide, which acts to slow the planet's rotation rate,…

Planets orbiting a planetesimal circumstellar disc can migrate inward from their initial positions because of dynamical friction between planets and planetesimals. The migration rate depends on the disc mass and on its time evolution.…

Terrestrial planets are more likely to be detected if they orbit M dwarfs due to the favorable planet/star size and mass ratios. However, M dwarf habitable zones are significantly closer to the star than the one around our Sun, which leads…

The long-term carbon cycle is vital for maintaining liquid water oceans on rocky planets due to the negative climate feedbacks involved in silicate weathering. Plate tectonics plays a crucial role in driving the long-term carbon cycle…