Related papers: Free-Floating Planets, the Einstein Desert, and 'O…
It has been claimed that the variability of field quasars resembles gravitational lensing by a large cosmological population of free-floating planets with mass of about 10 Earths. But Galactic photometric monitoring experiments, on the…
Recent papers have found that the inferred slope of the high-mass ($>1.5$ M$_\odot$) IMF for field stars in the solar vicinity has a larger value ($\sim 1.7-2.1$) than the slopes ($\sim 1.2-1.7$; Salpeter= 1.35) inferred from numerous…
Context. Gaia DR2 offers unparalleled precision on stars' parallaxes and proper motions. This allows the prediction of microlensing events for which the lens stars (and any planets they possess) are nearby and may be well studied and…
This work is a continuation of our previous articles (Yermolaev et al. in J. Geophys. Res. 120, 7094, 2015; Yermolaev et al. in Solar Phys. 292, 193, 2017; Yermolaev et al. in Solar Phys. 293, 91, 2018), which describe the average temporal…
We consider strong gravitational lensing by nearby stars. Using our wave-optical treatment of lensing phenomena, we study Einstein rings that may form around nearby stellar lenses. It is remarkable that these rings are bright and large…
Theoretical considerations of fundamental physics, as well as certain cosmological observations, persistently point out to permissibility, and maybe necessity, of macroscopic modifications of the Einstein general relativity. The…
We characterize the occurrence rate of planets, ranging in size from 0.5-16 R$_\oplus$, orbiting FGK stars with orbital periods from 0.5-500 days. Our analysis is based on results from the "DR25" catalog of planet candidates produced by…
The Einstein radius of a cluster provides a relatively model-independent measure of the mass density of a cluster within a projected radius of ~ 150 kpc, large enough to be relatively unaffected by gas physics. We show that the observed…
The probability of occurrence of extreme solar particle events (SPEs) with the fluence of (>30 MeV) protons F30>10^{10} cm^{-2} is evaluated based on data of cosmogenic isotopes 14C and 10Be in terrestrial archives centennial-millennial…
The false-positive probability (FPP) of Kepler transiting candidates is a key value for statistical studies of candidate properties. A previous investigation of the stellar population in the Kepler field has provided an estimate for the FPP…
We propose that the eccentricity and sharpness of the edge of Fomalhaut's disk are due to a planet just interior to the ring edge. The collision timescale consistent with the disk opacity is long enough that spiral density waves cannot be…
I show that microlens parallaxes, $\pi_{\rm E}$, can be derived for free-floating planets (FFPs) with masses down to that of Pluto, by combining observations from a satellite in geosynchronous (GEO) orbit with another observatory that is on…
Short-timescale microlensing events are likely to be produced by substellar brown dwarfs (BDs), but it is difficult to securely identify BD lenses based on only event timescales $t_{\rm E}$ because short-timescale events can also be…
Currently, we have only limited means to probe the presence of planets at large orbital separations. Foreman-Mackey et al. searched for long-period transiting planets in the Kepler light curves using an automated pipeline. Here, we apply…
Catastrophic planetesimal disruptions offer a unique opportunity to study and characterize large planetesimal populations in exoplanetary systems that are not currently detectable by modern observatories. The unexpected discovery of a…
Free-floating planets are the remnants of violent dynamical rearrangements of planetary systems. It is possible that even our own solar system ejected a large planet early in its evolution. WFIRST will have the ability to detect…
We present exoplanet occurrence rates estimated with approximate Bayesian computation for planets with radii between 0.5 and 16 $R_{\bigoplus}$ and orbital periods between 0.78 and 400 days, orbiting FGK dwarf stars. We base our results on…
The origin of the interstellar object 1I/'Oumuamua, has defied explanation. In a companion paper (Jackson & Desch, 2021), we show that a body of N2 ice with axes 45 m x 44 m x 7.5 m at the time of observation would be consistent with its…
KMT-2016-BLG-2605, with planet-host mass ratio $q=0.012\pm 0.001$, has the shortest Einstein timescale, $t_\e = 3.41\pm 0.13\,$days, of any planetary microlensing event to date. This prompts us to examine the full sample of 7 short…
Free-floating planets are a new class of planets recently discovered. These planets don't orbit within stellar systems, instead living a nomadic life within the galaxy. How such objects formed remains elusive. Numerous works have explored…