Related papers: On the Need for a Classification System for Consis…
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…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
Models of planet formation are mainly focused on the accretion and dynamical processes of the planets, neglecting their chemical composition. In this work, we calculate the condensation sequence of the different chemical elements for a…
The aim of the chapter is to summarize our understanding of the compositional distribution across the different reservoirs of small bodies (main belt asteroids, giant planet trojans, irregular satellites of the giant planets, TNOs, comets).…
Rocky planets in our Solar System, namely Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which is generally added to this group due to its geological complexity, possess a solid surface and share a common structure divided into major layers,…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small…
Royal Society Discussion Meeting (2013) `Characterizing exoplanets'. Of the 900+ confirmed exoplanets discovered since 1995 for which we have constraints on their mass (i.e., not including Kepler candidates), 75% have masses larger than…
We describe a coagulation model that leads to the rapid formation of super-Earths and the cores of gas giant planets. Interaction of collision fragments with the gaseous disk is the crucial element of this model. The gas entrains small…
Transit surveys combined with Doppler data have revealed a class of gas giant planets that are massive and highly enriched in heavy elements (e.g., HD149026b, GJ436b, and HAT-P-20b). It is tempting to consider these planets as validation of…
The standard picture of planet formation posits that giant gas planets are over-grown rocky planets massive enough to attract enormous gas atmospheres. It has been shown recently that the opposite point of view is physically plausible: the…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
Extrasolar planet host stars have been found to be enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the composition of material available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on…
State-of-the-art planet formation models are now capable of accounting for the full spectrum of known planet types. This comes at the cost of increasing complexity of the models, which calls into question whether established links between…
The large number of detected giant exoplanets offers the opportunity to improve our understanding of the formation mechanism, evolution, and interior structure of gas giant planets. The two main models for giant planet formation are core…
Planets with sizes between those of Earth and Neptune divide into two populations: purely rocky bodies whose atmospheres contribute negligibly to their sizes, and larger gas-enveloped planets possessing voluminous and optically thick…
The number of extrasolar planets discovered is increasing, so that more than five thousand exoplanets have been confirmed to date. Now we have an opportunity to test the validity of the laws governing planetary systems and take steps to…
We analyse a large sample of galactic planetary nebulae based on their chemical composition and morphology. A recent morphological classification system is adopted, and several elements are considered, namely He, N, O, S, Ar, Ne, and C in…
The bulk compositions of small planets ($R_p< 2 \mathrm{R}_\oplus$) are directly linked to their formation histories, making reliable compositional constraints imperative for testing models of planet formation and evolution. Because…
Planet formation theory suggests that planet bulk compositions are likely to reflect the chemical abundance ratios of their host star's photosphere. Variations in the abundance of particular chemical species in stellar photospheres between…
Galaxies are complex systems the evolution of which apparently results from the interplay of dynamics, star formation, chemical enrichment, and feedback from supernova explosions and supermassive black holes. The hierarchical theory of…