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We present 230 realizations of a numerical model of planet formation in systems without gas giants. These represent a scenario in which protoplanets grow in a region of a circumstellar disk where water ice condenses (the "ice line''), but…
Primordial black holes, with masses comparable to asteroids, are an attractive possibility for dark matter. In addition, other forms of dark matter could form compact dark objects (CDO). We search for small tidal accelerations from low mass…
The distribution of nearby (cz < 7500 km/s) galaxies has been explored by minimal spanning trees; allowance has been made for the drastic decrease of data with distance. The investigation finds that all galaxies are members of irregular…
Galaxy mergers lead to the formation of massive black hole binaries which can accelerate background stars close to the speed of light. We estimate the comoving density of ejected stars with a peculiar velocity in excess of $0.1c$ or $0.5c$…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
Two populations of minor bodies in the outer Solar System remain particularly elusive: Scattered Disk objects and Sedna-like objects. These populations are important dynamical tracers, and understanding the details of their spatial- and…
The recent discovery of an earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri has drawn much attention to this star and its environment. We performed a series of observations of Proxima Centauri using SPHERE, the planet finder instrument installed…
Because planets are not expected to be able to form close to stars due to the high temperatures, it has been suggested that the observed close orbiting ($\sim 0.05$ AU) large mass planets ($\sim M_J$) might be mirror worlds -- planets…
We analytically and numerically investigate the possibility that a still undiscovered body X, moving along an unbound hyperbolic path from outside the solar system, may penetrate its inner regions in the next few years posing a threat to…
Estimates of the frequency of planetary systems in the Milky Way are observationally limited by the low-mass planet regime. Nevertheless, substantial evidence for systems with undetectably low planetary masses now exist in the form of…
Interstellar objects (ISOs) represent a compelling and under-explored category of celestial bodies, providing physical laboratories to understand the formation of our solar system and probe the composition and properties of material formed…
Terrestrial planetary systems may exist around nearby stars as the Earth-sized counterparts to the many giant planets already discovered within the solar neighborhood. In this chapter we first discuss the numerous techniques which have been…
On small scales the observable Universe is highly inhomogeneous, with galaxies and clusters forming a complex web of voids and filaments. The optical properties of such configurations can be quite different from the perfectly smooth…
We present an improved estimate of the occurrence rate of small planets orbiting small stars by searching the full four-year Kepler data set for transiting planets using our own planet detection pipeline and conducting transit injection and…
The organization of the orbits of most minor bodies in the Solar system seems to follow random patterns, the result of billions of years of chaotic dynamical evolution. Much as heterogeneous orbital behaviour is ubiquitous, dynamically…
The vast majority of known extrasolar planets orbit stars with a narrow range of masses (0.7-1.3 M_sun). Recent years have seen rapid growth in our knowledge about the properties of planetary systems with host stars significantly more…
Determining the presence of widely separated substellar-mass companion is crucial to understand the dynamics of inner planets in extrasolar planetary systems (e.g. to explain their high mean eccentricity as inner planets are perturbed by…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are a transient population of small bodies with orbits near or in the terrestrial planet region. They represent a mid-stage in the dynamical cycle of asteroids and comets, which starts with their removal from the…
The primary difficulty with using transits to discover extrasolar planets is the low probability a planet has of transiting its parent star. One way of overcoming this difficulty is to search for transits in dense stellar fields, such as…
Experience in exploring our own solar system has shown that direct investigation of planetary bodies using space probes invariably yields scientific knowledge not otherwise obtainable. In the case of exoplanets, such direct investigation…