Related papers: Giant Planets from the Inside-Out
Orbital evolution is a critical process that sculpts planetary systems, particularly during their early stages where planet-disk interactions are expected to lead to the formation of resonant chains. Despite the theoretically expected…
The wealth of observational data about Jupiter and Saturn provides strong constraints to guide our understanding of the formation of giant planets. The size of the core and the total amount of heavy elements in the envelope have been…
Studying exoplanets with their parent stars is crucial to understand their population, formation and history. We review some of the key questions regarding their evolution with particular emphasis on giant gaseous exoplanets orbiting close…
A comprehensive exploration of Uranus and Neptune is essential to understand the formation and evolution of the giant planets, in particular, solar system, in general, and, by extension, a vast population of exoplanets. Though core…
Seismology applied to giant planets could drastically change our understanding of their deep interiors, as it has happened with the Earth, the Sun, and many main-sequence and evolved stars. The study of giant planets' composition is…
Exoplanets number in their thousands, and the number is ever increasing with the advent of new surveys and improved instrumentation. One of the most surprising things we have learnt from these discoveries is not that small-rocky planets in…
We review the interior structure and evolution of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and extrasolar giant planets with particular emphasis on constraining their global composition.
Understanding the dominant brown dwarf and giant planet formation processes, and finding out whether these processes rely on completely different mechanisms or share common channels represents one of the major challenges of astronomy and…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…
Probing the interiors of the gas giant planets in our Solar System is not an easy task. It requires a set of accurate measurements combined with theoretical models that are used to infer the planetary composition and its depth dependence.…
Planets form in the discs of gas and dust that surround young stars. It is not known whether gas giant planets on wide orbits form the same way as Jupiter or by fragmentation of gravitationally unstable discs. Here we show that a giant…
We propose a comprehensive survey of giant planets ranging from close-in highly irradiated hot Jupiters to young, wide-orbit directly imaged planets. The combination of two established techniques for probing planetary atmospheric…
Revealing the true nature of the gas giant planets in our Solar System is challenging. The masses of Jupiter and Saturn are about 318 and 95 Earth masses, respectively. While they mostly consist of hydrogen and helium, the total mass and…
Planets of 1-4 times Earth's size on orbits shorter than 100 days exist around 30-50% of all Sun-like stars. In fact, the Solar System is particularly outstanding in its lack of "hot super-Earths" (or "mini-Neptunes"). These planets -- or…
In the hot-start core accretion formation model for gas giants, the interior of a planet is usually assumed to be fully convective. By calculating the detailed internal evolution of a planet assuming hot start outer boundary conditions, we…
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…
Recent analyses have shown that the concluding stages of giant planet formation are accompanied by the development of large-scale meridional flow of gas inside the planetary Hill sphere. This circulation feeds a circumplanetary disk that…
Gas giant planets are differentially rotating magnetic objects that have strong and complex interactions with their environment. In our Solar system, they interact with their numerous moons while exoplanets with very short orbital periods…
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…
Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets at small orbital radii, or with significant eccentricities, indicate that interactions between massive planets and the disks of gas and dust from which they formed are vital for determining the final…