Related papers: On the ocean beach -- why elliptic pebbles do not …
Erosion of rocky coasts spontaneously creates irregular seashores. But the geometrical irregularity, in turn, damps the sea-waves, decreasing the average wave amplitude. There may then exist a mutual self-stabilisation of the waves…
The amount of nebular gas that a planet can bind is limited by its cooling rate, which is set by the opacity of its envelope. Accreting dust and pebbles contribute to the envelope opacity and, thus, influence the outcome of planet…
I examine the standard model of planet formation, including pebble accretion, using numerical simulations. Planetary embryos large enough to become giant planets do not form beyond the ice line within a typical disk lifetime unless icy…
The elliptical instability is a generic instability which takes place in any rotating flow whose streamlines are elliptically deformed. Up to now, it has been widely studied in the case of a constant, non-zero differential rotation between…
Pebble accretion refers to the growth of planetary bodies through the accretion of pebble-sized particles. Pebbles are defined in terms of their aerodynamically size $\tau_s$, which describes the level of coupling to the disk gas.…
Turbulence plays a key role in the transport of pebble-sized particles. It also affects the ability of pebbles to be accreted by protoplanets, because it stirs pebbles out of the disk midplane. In addition, turbulence can suppress pebble…
After thrown onto a solid substrate, very soft spherical gels bounce repeatedly. Separate rheological measurements suggest that these balls can be treated as nearly elastic. The Hertz contact deformation expected in the static (elastic)…
Tests for the intrinsic shape of the luminosity distribution in elliptical galaxies are discussed, with an emphasis on the uncertainties. Recent determinations of the ellipticity frequency function imply a paucity of nearly spherical…
Much recent effort has focused on glassy and jamming properties of spherical particles. Very little is known about such phenomena for non-spherical particles, and we take a first step by studying ellipses. We find important differences…
We compare different examples of spherical accretion onto a gravitating mass. Limiting cases include the accretion of a collisionally dominated fluid and the accretion of collisionless particles. We derive expressions for the accretion rate…
The existence of a crumpled phase for self-avoiding elastic surfaces was postulated more than three decades ago using simple Flory-like scaling arguments. Despite much effort, its stability in a microscopic environment has been the subject…
We investigate two possible effects of the tidal field induced by a spherical cluster on its elliptical galaxy members: the modification of the ellipticity of a spherical galaxy and the isophotal alignment in the cluster radial direction of…
We study the morphological evolution of surfaces during ion sputtering and we compare their dynamical roughening with aeolian ripple formation in sandy deserts. We show that the two phenomena can be described within the same theoretical…
The cosmological remnants of a first-order phase transition generally depend on the perturbations that the walls of expanding bubbles originate in the plasma. Several of the formation mechanisms occur when bubbles collide and lose their…
Planetesimals are believed to form by the gravitational collapse of aerodynamically concentrated clumps of pebbles. Many properties of the objects in the cold classical Kuiper belt -- such as binarity, rotation, and size distribution -- are…
Large astronomical objects such as stars or planets, produce approximately spherical shapes due to the large gravitational forces, and if the object is rotating rapidly, it becomes an oblate spheroid. In juxtaposition to this, we conduct a…
The evolution of surface gravity waves is driven by nonlinear interactions that trigger an energy cascade similarly to the one observed in hydrodynamic turbulence. This process, known as wave turbulence, has been found to display anomalous…
Coagulation theory predicts that micron-sized dust grains grow into pebbles which drift inward towards the star, when they reach sizes of mm-cm. When they cross the orbit of a planet, a fraction of these drifting pebbles will be accreted.…
An array of spheres descending slowly through a viscous fluid always clumps [J.M. Crowley, J. Fluid Mech. {\bf 45}, 151 (1971)]. We show that anisotropic particle shape qualitatively transforms this iconic instability of collective…
A general expression for the momentum equation in the Smooth Particle Hydrodynacis approximation is derived for an arbitrary kernel, and compared with its spherical counterpart for various degrees of ellipsoidicity. For such an ellsipsoidal…