Related papers: A link between the size and composition of comets
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
During protoplanetary disk formation, dust grains located in the outer disk retain their pristine icy composition, while solids in the inner stellar-heated disk undergo volatile loss. This process may have left a fossil record in Solar…
The meridional temperature profile of the upper layers of planetary atmospheres is set through a balance between differential radiative heating by a nearby star, or by intrinsic heat fluxes emanating from the deep interior, and the…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
Comet--asteroid transition (CAT) objects are small solar system bodies in the process of evolving from cometary nuclei into asteroids, as they gradually lose volatile substances due to solar heating. The volatile material is mainly water…
Planets and their atmospheres are built from gas and solid material in protoplanetary disks. Recent results suggest that solid material like pebbles may contribute significantly to building up planetary atmospheres. In order to link…
Excess near-infrared emission is detected around one fifth of main-sequence stars, but its nature is a mystery. These excesses are interpreted as thermal emission from populations of small, hot dust very close to their stars (`hot…
We investigate whether coagulation models of planet formation can explain the observed size distributions of transneptunian objects (TNOs). Analyzing published and new calculations, we demonstrate robust relations between the size of the…
The observed masses and radii of sub-Neptunes are typically explained by the gas dwarf and the water world scenarios. While their evolutionary history on a population level has been proposed as a method to distinguish between these…
The origins of the elements and isotopes of cosmic material is a critical aspect of understanding the evolution of the universe. Nucleosynthesis typically requires physical conditions of high temperatures and densities. These are found in…
Comets would have amorphous ice rather than crystalline one at the epoch of their accretion. Cometary ice contains some impurities that govern the latent heat of ice crystallization, $L_{\rm cry}$. However, it is still controversial whether…
A prevailing open problem in planetary nebulae research, and photoionized gaseous nebulae research at large, is the systematic discrepancies in electron temperatures and ionic abundances as derived from recombination and collisionally…
We investigate a new mechanism for the cosmological QCD phase transition: inhomogeneous nucleation. The primordial temperature fluctuations, measured to be $\delta T/T \sim 10^{-5}$, are larger than the tiny temperature interval, in which…
Upcoming studies of extrasolar gas giants will give precise insights into the composition of planetary atmospheres with the ultimate goal to link it to the formation history of the planet. Here, we investigate how drifting and evaporating…
A novel computational treatment of dense, stiff, coupled reaction rate equations is introduced to study the nucleation, growth, and possible coalescence of cavities during neutron irradiation of metals. Radiation damage is modeled by the…
Recent observations of extrasolar gas giants suggest super-stellar C/O ratios in planetary atmospheres, while interior models of observed extrasolar giant planets additionally suggest high heavy element contents. Furthermore, recent…
Context: Remote light scattering and thermal infrared observations provide clues about the physical properties of cometary and interplanetary dust particles. Identifying these properties will lead to a better understanding of the formation…
Molecular oxygen has been confirmed as the fourth most abundant molecule in cometary material O$_2$/H$_2$O $\sim 4$ %) and is thought to have a primordial nature, i.e., coming from the interstellar cloud from which our solar system was…
The relation between ice composition in the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on the one hand and relative abundances of volatiles in the coma on the other hand is important for the interpretation of density measurements in the…
The Rosetta mission and its exquisite measurements have revived the debate on whether comets are pristine planetesimals or collisionally evolved objects. We investigate the collisional evolution experienced by the precursors of current…