Related papers: Compositional Diversity of Rocky Exoplanets
The giant planet-metallicity correlation revealed that planetary formation depends on the stellar properties. There is growing evidence that it is also valid for smaller hot planets, but it is not clear whether elements other than iron also…
Oxygen fugacity is a measure of rock oxidation that influences planetary structure and evolution. Most rocky bodies in the Solar System formed at oxygen fugacities approximately five orders of magnitude higher than a hydrogen-rich gas of…
Life on Earth emerged at the interface of the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. This setting serves as our basis for how biological systems originate on rocky planets. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that the chemical nature of…
Planetary systems that orbit white dwarf stars can be studied via spectroscopic observations of the stars themselves. Numerous white dwarfs are seen to have accreted mostly rocky minor planets, the remnants of which are present in the…
A persistent question in exoplanet demographics is whether exoplanetary systems form from similar compositional building blocks to our own. Polluted white dwarf stars offer a unique way to address this question as they provide measurements…
Astrophysical observations reveal a large diversity of radii and masses of exoplanets. It is important to characterize the interiors of exoplanets to understand planetary diversity and further determine how unique, or not, Earth is.…
Gas-giant exoplanets are test cases for theories of planet formation as their atmospheres are proposed to carry signatures of their formation within the protoplanetary disk. The metallicity and C/O are key diagnostics, allowing to…
Astronomical surveys have identified numerous exoplanets with bulk compositions that are unlike the planets of the Solar System, including rocky super-Earths and gas-enveloped sub-Neptunes. Observing the atmospheres of these objects…
In principle, the combined measurements of the mass and radius a giant exoplanet allow one to determine the relative fraction of hydrogen and helium and of heavy elements in the planet. However, uncertainties on the underlying physics imply…
The coupled interior-atmosphere system of terrestrial exoplanets remains poorly understood. Exoplanets show a wide variety of sizes, densities, surface temperatures, and interior structures, with important knock-on effects for this coupled…
In the last few years astronomical surveys have expanded the reach of planetary science into the realm of small and dense extrasolar worlds. These share a number of characteristics with the terrestrial and icy planetary objects of the Solar…
One in every two atoms in the Earth, Mars, and the Moon is oxygen; it is the third most abundant element in the solar system. The oxygen isotopic compositions of the terrestrial planets are different from those of the Sun and demonstrate…
In order to characterize giant exoplanets and better understand their origin, knowledge of how the planet's composition depends on its mass and stellar environment is required. In this work, we simulate the thermal evolution of gaseous…
As the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres proceeds, providing insights into atmospheric chemistry and composition, a key question is how much deeper into the planet we might be able to see from its atmospheric properties alone. For…
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…
The relationship between the composition of rocky exoplanets and their host stars is fundamental to understanding planetary formation and evolution. However, previous studies have been limited by inconsistent datasets, observational biases…
The prospects for finding transiting exoplanets in the range of a few to 20 Earth masses is growing rapidly with both ground-based and spaced-based efforts. We describe a publicly available computer code to compute and quantify the…
Solar and extrasolar planets are the subject of numerous studies aiming to determine their chemical composition and internal structure. In the case of extrasolar planets, the composition is important as it partly governs their potential…
The present-day bulk elemental composition of an exoplanet can provide insight into a planet's formation and evolutionary history. Such information is now being measured for dozens of planets with state-of-the-art facilities using Bayesian…
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,…