Related papers: Geophysical Evolution During Rocky Planet Formatio…
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…
Stars and planets both form by accreting material from a surrounding disk. Because they grow from the same material, theory predicts that there should be a relationship between their compositions. In this study, we search for a…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
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…
It has been established theoretically that atmospheric thermal tides on rocky planets can lead to significant modifications of rotational evolution, both close to synchronous rotation and at faster rotations if certain resonant conditions…
Dozens of habitable zone, approximately earth-sized exoplanets are known today. An emerging frontier of exoplanet studies is identifying which of these habitable zone, small planets are actually habitable (have all necessary conditions for…
A first characterization of many exoplanets has recently been achieved by the observational determination of their radius. For some planets, a measurement of the luminosity has also been possible, with many more directly imaged planets…
Characterizing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets is the new frontier in exoplanetary science. The last two decades of exoplanet discoveries have revealed that exoplanets are very common and extremely diverse in their orbital and bulk…
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,…
Star and planet formation are inextricably linked. In the earliest phases of the collapse of a protostar a disc forms around the young star and such discs are observed for the first several million years of a star's life. It is within these…
Aims: The secondary atmospheres of terrestrial planets form and evolve as a consequence of interaction with the interior over geological time. We aim to quantify the influence of planetary bulk composition on the interior--atmosphere…
We study the time evolution of two protoplanets still embedded in a protoplanetary disk. The results of two different numerical approaches are presented and compared. In the first approach, the motion of the disk material is computed with…
As part of a national scientific network 'Pathways to Habitability' the formation of planets and the delivery of water onto these planets is a key question as water is essential for the development of life. In the first part of the paper we…
Planet formation is directly linked to the birthing environment that protoplanetary disks provide. The disk properties determine whether a giant planet will form and how it evolves. The number of exoplanet and disk observations is…
Stars and planets form, live, and evolve in unison. Throughout the life of a star, dusty circumstellar discs and stellar outflows influence the further evolution of both the star(s) and their orbiting planet(s). Planet-forming discs, winds…
We couple a simplified model for the galactic chemical evolution, with software that models the condensation of dust in protoplanetary disks and software that models the interior structure of planets in order to estimate the effects that…
The composition of rocky planets is strongly driven by the primordial materials in the protoplanetary disk, which can be inferred from the abundances of the host star. Understanding this compositional link is crucial for characterizing…
The study of planets outside our solar system may lead to major advances in our understanding of the Earth, and provide insight into the universal set of rules by which planets form and evolve. To achieve these goals requires applying…
Planet formation remains a fundamentally important yet poorly understood process. Protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planetary systems, exhibit a wide range of substructures that are increasingly interpreted as signatures of…
The recent detection of planets around very low mass stars raises the question of the formation, composition and potential habitability of these objects. We use planetary system formation models to infer the properties, in particular their…