Related papers: Dark Exoplanets
The search for extrasolar planets is strongly motivated by the goal of characterizing how frequent habitable worlds and life may be within the Galaxy. Whilst much effort has been spent on searching for Earth-like planets, large moons may…
Among the group of extrasolar planets, transiting planets provide a great opportunity to obtain direct measurements for the basic physical properties, such as mass and radius of these objects. These planets are therefore highly important in…
A space telescope capable of high-contrast imaging has been recognized as the avenue toward finding terrestrial planets around nearby Sun-like stars and characterizing their potential habitability. It is thus essential to quantify the…
Ultralight bosons such as axion-like particles are viable candidates for dark matter. They can form stable, macroscopic field configurations in the form of topological defects that could concentrate the dark matter density into many…
Detecting exoplanet transits at X-ray wavelengths would provide a window into the effects of high energy irradiation on the upper atmospheres of planets. However, stars are relatively dim in the X-ray, making exoplanet transit detections…
The detection of thousands of extrasolar planets by the transit method naturally raises the question of whether potential extrasolar observers could detect the transits of the Solar System planets. We present a comprehensive analysis of the…
One of the promising methods to search for life on extra-solar planets (exoplanets) is to detect life's signatures in their atmospheres. Spectra of exoplanet atmospheres at the modest resolution needed to search for oxygen, carbon dioxide,…
The characterization of exoplanets and their birth protoplanetary disks has enormously advanced in the last decade. Benefitting from that, our global understanding of the planet formation processes has been substantially improved. In this…
Over 300 extrasolar planets (exoplanets) have been detected orbiting nearby stars. We now hope to conduct a census of all planets around nearby stars and to characterize their atmospheres and surfaces with spectroscopy. Rocky planets within…
We discuss a new class of exoplanets that appear to be emitting a tail of dusty effluents. These disintegrating planets are found close to their host stars and have very hot, and likely molten, surfaces. The properties of the dust should…
This work investigates the dark matters structures that form on the smallest cosmological scales. We find that the types and abundances of structures which form at approximately Earth-mass scales are very sensitive to the nature of dark…
The forthcoming space missions, able to detect Earth-like planets by the transit method, will a fortiori also be able to detect the transit of artificial planet-size objects. Multiple artificial objects would produce lightcurves easily…
Observations in the optical, in X-rays, and gravitational lensing of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and large-scale structure are beginning to provide clues to the dark matter problem. I review the impact of these observations on some of…
Exoplanets are celestial bodies orbiting stars beyond our Solar System. Although historically they posed detection challenges, Kepler's data has revolutionized our understanding. By analyzing flux values from the Kepler Mission, we…
Astronomical and cosmological observations of the past 80 years build solid evidence that atomic matter makes up only a small fraction of the matter in the universe. The dominant fraction does not interact with electromagnetic radiation,…
In this article we address the mystery of dark matter. We expound the various evidences, astrophysical and cosmological, leading to hypothesize the existence of an invisible form of matter, whose attempts at detecting it have so far all…
The dark matter problem is almost a century old. Since the 1930s evidence has been growing that our cosmos is dominated by a new form of non-baryonic matter, that holds galaxies and clusters together and influences cosmic structures up to…
We investigate whether rings around extrasolar planets could be detected from those planets' transit lightcurves. To this end we develop a basic theoretical framework for calculating and interpreting the lightcurves of ringed planet…
Numerous telescopes and techniques have been used to find and study extrasolar planets, but none has been more successful than NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, the smallest planets to…
This review article delves into the study of low-mass exoplanets: super-Earths, mini-Neptunes and the new categories within and between that we are starting to discover. We provide an overview of current exoplanet observational…