Related papers: A Note on Planet Size and Cooling Rate
Here we show preliminary calculations of the cooling and contraction of a 2 MJ planet. These calculations, which are being extended to 1-10 MJ, differ from other published "cooling tracks" in that they include a core accretion-gas capture…
The climates of terrestrial planets with a small amount of water on their surface, called land planets, are significantly different from the climates of planets having a large amount of surface water. Land planets have a higher runaway…
Exploring planetary systems similar to our solar system can provide a means to explore a large range of possibly temperate climates on Earth-like worlds. Rather than run hundreds of simulations with different eccentricities at fixed…
The Earth's surface is subdivided into eight large tectonic plates and many smaller ones. We reconstruct the plate tessellation history and demonstrate that both large and small plates display two distinct hierarchical patterns, described…
This article reviews the emerging field of exo-geoscience, focusing on the geological and geophysical processes thought to influence the evolution and (eu)habitability of rocky exoplanets. We examine the possible roles of planetary…
Gravitationally unstable disks can fragment and form bound objects provided that their cooling time is short. In protoplanetary disks radiative cooling is likely to be too slow to permit formation of planets by fragmentation within several…
A terrestrial planet in an orbit far outside of the standard habitable zone could maintain surface liquid water as a result of H2-H2 collision-induced absorption by a thick H2 atmosphere. Without a stabilizing climate feedback, however,…
Low-mass M stars are plentiful in the Universe and often host small, rocky planets detectable with the current instrumentation. Recently, seven small planets have been discovered orbiting the ultracool dwarf…
Planetary obliquity (axial tilt) plays an important role in regulating the climate evolution and habitability of water-covered planets. Despite the suspicion of large obliquities in several exoplanetary systems, this phenomenon remains hard…
Exoplanets with substantial Hydrogen/Helium atmospheres have been discovered in abundance, many residing extremely close to their parent stars. The extreme irradiation levels these atmospheres experience causes them to undergo hydrodynamic…
Planets of 1-4 times Earth's size on orbits shorter than 100 days exist around 30-50% of all Sun-like stars. In fact, the Solar System is particularly outstanding in its lack of "hot super-Earths" (or "mini-Neptunes"). These planets -- or…
The orbital regime of a terrestrial planet plays a significant role in shaping its atmospheric dynamics, climate, and hence potential habitability. The orbit is also likely to play a role in shaping the response of a planetary atmosphere to…
Several short-period Jupiter-mass planets have been discovered around nearby solar-type stars. During the circularization of their orbits, the dissipation of tidal disturbance by their host stars heats the interior and inflates the sizes of…
The effect of rotation on the cooling of neutron stars is investigated. The thermal evolution equations are solved in two dimensions with full account of general relativistic effects. It is found that rotation is particularly important in…
Mutually misaligned circumbinary planets may form in a warped or broken gas disc or from later planet-planet interactions. With numerical simulations and analytic estimates we explore the dynamics of two circumbinary planets with a large…
In recent years, there has been interest in Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zones of low mass stars ($\sim0.1-0.6\,M_\odot$). Furthermore, it has been argued that a large moon may be important for stabilizing conditions on a planet…
A reasonable basis for future astronomical investigations of exoplanets lies in our best knowledge of the planets and satellites in the Solar System. Solar System bodies exhibit a wide variety of surface environments, even including…
With recent advances in exoplanet observational techniques enabling the discovery of increasingly smaller planets, a crucial question emerges in the search for habitable planets: how small can a planet be and still maintain an atmosphere?…
In protoplanetary disks, small mm-cm-sized pebbles drift inwards which can aid planetary growth and influence the chemical composition of their natal disks. Gaps in protoplanetary disks can hinder the effective inward transport of pebbles…
Exoplanets around different types of stars provide a window into the diverse environments in which planets form. This chapter describes the observed relations between exoplanet populations and stellar properties and how they connect to…