Related papers: Possible thermal evolutionary pathways of irregula…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
How big were the first planetesimals? We attempt to answer this question by conducting coagulation simulations in which the planetesimals grow by mutual collisions and form larger bodies and planetary embryos. The size frequency…
One of the longstanding unsolved problems of planet formation is how solid bodies of a few decimeters in size can "stick" to form large planetesimals. This is known as the "meter size barrier". In recent years it has become increasingly…
The composition of giant planets' atmospheres is an important tracer of their formation history. While many theoretical studies investigate the heavy-element accretion within a gaseous protoplanetary disk, the possibility of solid accretion…
In view of the many recent observations conducted by ALMA and SPHERE, it is becoming clear that protoplanetary disks form planets in narrow annular gaps at various distances from the central protostars before these protostars are actually…
No planets exist inside the orbit of Mercury and the terrestrial planets of the solar system exhibit a localized configuration. According to thermal structure calculation of protoplanetary disks, a silicate condensation line (~ 1300 K) is…
The formation of planetesimals in protoplanetary disks due to collisional sticking of smaller dust aggregates has to face at least two severe obstacles, namely the rapid loss of material due to radial inward drift and particle fragmentation…
We use high resolution 3D SPH simulations to study the evolution of self-gravitating binary protoplanetary disks. Heating by shocks and cooling are included. We consider different orbital separations and masses of the disks and central…
Gas-giant planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn and massive exoplanets, were formed via the gas accretion onto the solid cores each with a mass of roughly ten Earth masses. However, rapid radial migration due to disk-planet interaction prevents…
We explore the dynamics of small planetesimals coexisting with massive protoplanetary cores in a gaseous nebula. Gas drag strongly affects the motion of small bodies leading to the decay of their eccentricities and inclinations, which are…
Self-gravitating protostellar discs are unstable to fragmentation if the gas can cool on a time scale that is short compared to the orbital period. We use a combination of hydrodynamic simulations and N-body orbit integrations to study the…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
The accretion ages of the first planetesimals-the parent bodies of magmatic iron meteorites-suggest they formed within the first 0.5-1 Myr of Solar System history. Yet, planetesimal formation appears to have occurred in at least two…
We present a new planetary structure/thermal evolution model, designed for use in problems that couple orbital dynamics with planetary structure. We first benchmark our structural/thermal evolution calculations against the \texttt{MESA}…
Knowledge of the surface thermal inertia of an asteroid can provide insight into surface structure: porous material has a lower thermal inertia than rock. We develop a means to estimate thermal inertia values of asteroids and use it to show…
Neutron stars harbour extremely strong magnetic fields within their solid outer crust. The topology of this field strongly influences the surface temperature distribution, and hence the star's observational properties. In this work, we…
The core accretion theory of planet formation has at least two fundamental problems explaining the origins of Uranus and Neptune: (1) dynamical times in the trans-Saturnian solar nebula are so long that core growth can take > 15 Myr, and…
The thermal history and internal structure of chondritic planetesimals, assembled before the giant impact phase of chaotic growth, potentially yield important implications for the final composition and evolution of terrestrial planets.…
Astronomical observations reveal that protoplanetary disks around young stars commonly have ring- and gap-like structures in their dust distributions. These features are associated with pressure bumps trapping dust particles at specific…
Gas-giant planets that form via core accretion might have very different characteristics from those that form via disk-instability. Disk-instability objects are typically thought to have higher entropies, larger radii, and (generally)…