Related papers: Random Models for Exploring Planet Compositions I:…
We discuss our current understanding of the interior structure and thermal evolution of giant planets. This includes the gas giants, such as Jupiter and Saturn, that are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium, as well as the "ice…
Giant gaseous planets often reside on orbits in sufficient proximity to their host stars for the planetary quadrupole gravitational field to become non-negligible. In presence of an additional planetary companion, a precise characterization…
We discuss the current state of knowledge of terrestrial planet formation from the aspects of different planet formation models and isotopic data from 182Hf-182W, U-Pb, lithophile-siderophile elements, 48Ca/44Ca isotope samples from…
The internal structures of Uranus and Neptune remain unknown. In addition, sub-Neptunes are now thought to be the most common type of exoplanets. Understanding the physical processes that govern the interiors of such planets is therefore…
We use new interior models of cold planets to investigate the mass-radius relationships of solid exoplanets, considering planets made primarily of iron, silicates, water, and carbon compounds. We find that the mass-radius relationships for…
Heavy elements are synthesized by the r-process in neutron star mergers and potentially in rare supernovae linked to strong magnetic fields. Expensive hydrodynamic simulations of these extreme environments are usually post-processed to…
Many exoplanets have been discovered with radii of 1-4 Earth radii, between that of Earth and Neptune. A number of these are known to have densities consistent with solid compositions, while others are "sub-Neptunes" likely to have…
While Jupiter's massive gas envelope consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, the key to understanding Jupiter's formation and evolution lies in the distribution of the remaining (heavy) elements. Before the Juno mission, the lack of…
This article provides an overview of how models of giant planet interiors are constructed. We review measurements from past space missions that provide constraints for the interior structure of Jupiter. We discuss typical three-layer…
The amount of surface water is thought to be critical for a planet's climate stability and thus habitability. However, the probability that a rocky planet may exhibit surface water at any point its evolution is dependent on multiple…
The detailed interior structure models of super-Earth planets show that there is degeneracy in the possible bulk compositions of a super-Earth at a given mass and radius, determined via radial velocity and transit measurements,…
Simple ``solar systems'' are generated with planetary orbital radii r distributed uniformly random in log(r) between 0.2 and 50 AU. A conservative stability criterion is imposed by requiring that adjacent planets are separated by a minimum…
The requirement that a planet must orbit outside of its Roche limit gives a lower limit on the planet's mean density. The minimum density depends almost entirely on the orbital period and is immune to systematic errors in the stellar…
Aims. In this letter, we calculate for the first time the full transonic hydrodynamic escape of an Earth-like atmosphere. We consider the case of an Earth-mass planet with an atmospheric composition identical to that of the current Earth…
The multiple-planet systems discovered by the Kepler mission exhibit the following feature: planet pairs near first-order mean-motion resonances prefer orbits just outside the nominal resonance, while avoiding those just inside the…
The equation of state (EoS) $P = P (\rho, ...)$ -- pressure as a function of density and other thermodynamical quantities -- is what generates particularities of mass--radius distribution $M (R)$ for super--dense compact stellar bodies, the…
A fundamental endeavor in exoplanetary research is to characterize the bulk compositions of planets via measurements of their masses and radii. With future sample sizes of hundreds of planets to come from TESS and PLATO, we develop a…
For most planets in the range of radii from 1 to 4 R$_{\oplus}$, water is a major component of the interior composition. At high pressure H${}_{2}$O can be solid, but for larger planets, like Neptune, the temperature can be too high for…
It has been shown that some aspects of the terrestrial planets can be explained, particularly the Earth/Mars mass ratio, when they form from a truncated disk with an outer edge near 1.0 au (Hansen 2009). This has been previously modeled…
We explore the possible Proxima Centauri b's interiors assuming the planet belongs to the class of dense solid planets (rocky with possible addition of water) and derive the corresponding radii. To do so, we use an internal structure model…