Related papers: The origin of free-floating planets
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…
The nature and origin of free-floating planets (FFPs) are still largely unconstrained because of a lack of large homogeneous samples to enable a statistical analysis of their properties. So far, most FFPs have been discovered using indirect…
Planets are thought to form via accretion from a remnant disk of gas and solids around a newly formed star. During this process material in the disk either remains bound to the star as part of either a planet, a smaller celestial body, or…
Over the past 25 years, observations have uncovered a large population of free-floating planets (FFPs), whose origins remain debated. Massive FFPs (several Jupiter masses or more) may form via gravitational collapse of molecular clouds,…
The discovery of numerous free-floating planets (FFPs) has intensified interest in their origins and dynamical histories. A leading formation mechanism is planet-planet scatterings in unstable multi-planetary systems, which can naturally…
In star clusters, close stellar encounters can strongly impact the architecture of a planetary system or even destroy it. We present a systematic study on the effects of stellar flybys on two-planet systems. When such a system experiences…
The origin of planetary mass objects (PMOs) wandering in young star clusters remains enigmatic, especially when they come in pairs. They could represent the lowest-mass object formed via molecular cloud collapse or high-mass planets ejected…
Most young low-mass stars are born as binary systems, and circumstellar disks have recently been observed around the individual components of proto-binary systems (e.g. L1551-IRS5). Thus planets and planetary systems are likely to form…
In recent years several planets have been discovered at wide orbits (>100 AU) around their host stars. Theoretical studies encounter difficulties in explaining their formation and origin. Here we propose a novel scenario for the production…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…
The discovery of planetary systems beyond our solar system has challenged established theories of planetary formation. Planetary orbits display a variety of unexpected architectures, and free-floating planets appear ubiquitous. The recent…
The Milky way Galaxy is brimming with free-floating objects, including stars, planets and planetesimals. For the purpose of this chapter, we define a free-floating object as a solid body that is not orbited by a considerably more massive…
Instabilities in planetary systems can result in the ejection of planets from their host system, resulting in free-floating planets (FFPs). If this occurs in a star cluster, the FFP may remain bound to the star cluster for some time and…
We have simulated encounters between planetary systems and single stars in various clustered environments. This allows us to estimate the fraction of systems liberated, the velocity distribution of the liberated planets, and the separation…
Recent spacecraft observations exploring solar system properties impact standard paradigms of the formation of stars, planets and comets. We stress the unexpected cloud of microscopic dust resulting from the DEEP IMPACT mission, and the…
The smallest dwarf galaxies are the most straight forward objects in which to study star formation processes on a galactic scale. They are typically single cell star forming entities, and as small potentials in orbit around a much larger…
Brown dwarfs and very low mass stars are a significant fraction of stars in our galaxy, and they are interesting laboratories to investigate planet formation in extreme conditions of low temperature and densities. In addition, the dust…
Though free-floating planets (FFPs) may outpopulate their bound counterparts in the terrestrial-mass range, they remain one of the least explored exoplanet demographics. Due to their negligible electromagnetic emission at all wavelengths,…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
We find that free-floating planets can remain bound to a star cluster for much longer than was previously assumed: of the order of the cluster half-mass relaxation timescale as opposed to the crossing-time. This result is based on N-body…