Related papers: Chasing Nomadic Worlds: A New Class of Deep Space …
Significant advances in the discovery and characterization of the planetary systems of nearby stars can be accomplished with a moderate aperture high performance coronagraphic space mission that could be started in the next decade. Its…
By targeting nearby M dwarfs, a transit search using modest equipment is capable of discovering planets as small as 2 Earth radii in the habitable zones of their host stars. The MEarth Project, a future transit search, aims to employ a…
The recent detection of microlensing of stars of LMC by compact objects in the halo of our galaxy suggests that our galaxy is surrounded by a non-luminous halo made of compact objects with mass of about $(0.03-0.5) \msun$. The rate of…
The near-term search for life beyond the solar system currently focuses on transiting planets orbiting small M dwarfs, and the challenges of detecting signs of life in their atmospheres. However, planets orbiting white dwarfs (WDs) would…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
Beyond black holes and neutron stars, new hypothetical compact objects have been proposed as potential astrophysical entities. In general, their properties have not yet been fully explored or understood, nor has it been proven whether or…
Stars in young nearby associations are the only targets allowing giant planet searches at all separations in the near future, by coupling indirect techniques such as radial velocity and deep imaging. These stars are first priorities targets…
The evolution of marginally bound supercluster-like objects in an accelerating LambdaCDM Universe is followed, by means of cosmological simulations, from the present time to an expansion factor a = 100. The objects are identified on the…
Moderately close binaries are a special class of targets for planet searches. From a theoretical standpoint, their hospitality to giant planets is uncertain and debated. From an observational standpoint, many of these systems present…
Studies of transiting extra-solar planets are of key importance for understanding the nature of planets outside our Solar System, because their densities can be determined, constraining of what the planets are made of. Using the data…
We investigate the trapping of interstellar objects during the early stages of star and planet formation. Our results show a very wide range of possible values that will be narrowed down as the population of interstellar objects becomes…
Cosmic voids are low-mass-density regions on intergalactic scales. They are where cosmic expansion and acceleration are most dominant, important places to understand and analyze for cosmology. This entry summarises theoretical underpinnings…
Microlensing is one of the most powerful methods that can detect extrasolar planets and a future space-based survey with a high monitoring frequency is proposed to detect a large sample of Earth-mass planets. In this paper, we examine the…
The Standard Cosmological Model predicts the existence of relic neutrinos, which are indirectly probed through the effective number of relativistic species in the early Universe. In addition, from neutrino flavour oscillations we know that…
This paper explores the intermediate-time dynamics of newly formed solar systems with a focus on possible mechanisms for planetary migration. We consider two limiting corners of the available parameter space -- crowded systems containing…
Continuous habitability of a planet is a critical condition for advanced forms of life to appear, but it can be endangered by astronomical events such as stellar encounters. The purpose of this study is to analyze close stellar encounters…
Results from gravitational microlensing suggested the existence of a large population of free-floating planetary mass objects. The main conclusion from this work was partly based on constraints from a direct imaging survey. This survey…
The very recent discovery of planets orbiting very low mass stars sheds light on these exotic objects. Planetary systems around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs are very different from our solar system: the planets are expected to be much…
Recent ground and space-based observations show that stars with multiple planets are common in the galaxy. Most of these observational methods are biased toward detecting large planets near to their host stars. Because of these…
Recent observations suggest that the ratio of the total density to the critical density of the universe, $\Omega_0$, is likely to be very close to one, with a significant proportion of this energy being in the form of a dark component with…