Related papers: Properties of outer solar system pebbles during pl…
The solar system's Oort cloud can be perturbed by the Galactic tide and by individual passing stars. These perturbations can inject Oort cloud objects into the inner parts of the solar system, where they may be observed as the long-period…
Our understanding of planet formation has been rapidly evolving in recent years. The classical planet formation theory, developed when the only known planetary system was our own Solar System, has been revised to account for the observed…
Jupiter's core is generally assumed to have formed beyond the snow line. Here we consider an alternative scenario, that Jupiter's core may have accumulated in the innermost parts of the protoplanetary disk. A growing body of research…
We study the collapse of pebble clouds with a statistical model to find the internal structure of comet-sized planetesimals. Pebble-pebble collisions occur during the collapse and the outcome of these collisions affect the resulting…
We integrated the orbital evolution of 30,000 Jupiter-family comets, 1300 resonant asteroids, and 7000 asteroidal, trans-Neptunian, and cometary dust particles. For initial orbital elements of bodies close to those of Comets 2P, 10P, 44P,…
The orbital architecture of the Solar System is thought to have been sculpted by a dynamical instability among the giant planets. During the instability a primordial outer disk of planetesimals was destabilized and ended up on…
We calculate the expected flux profile of comets into the planetary system from the Oort cloud arising from Galactic tides and encounters with molecular clouds. We find that both periodic and sporadic bombardment episodes, with amplitudes…
The solar system was most likely born in a star cluster containing at least 1000 stars. It is highly probable that this cluster environment influenced various properties of the solar system like its chemical composition, size and the…
The distribution of heavy elements is anomalously low in the asteroid main belt region compared with elsewhere in the solar system. Observational surveys also indicate a deficit in the number of small ($ \le 50$~km size) asteroids that is…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
Previous studies of cometary impacts in the outer Solar System used the spatial distribution of ecliptic comets (ECs) from dynamical models that assumed ECs began on low-inclination orbits (<5 deg) in the Kuiper belt. In reality, the source…
We have conducted an angular differential imaging survey with NIRC2 at Keck in search of close-in substellar companions to a sample of seven systems with confirmed planetary-mass companions (PMCs) on wide orbits (>50 AU). These…
Metal-rich asteroids and iron meteorites are considered core remnants of differentiated planetesimals and or products of oxygen-depleted accretion. Investigating the origins of iron-rich planetesimals could provide key insights into planet…
Comets can be divided into two groups: type I, characterized by high gas/dust ratio, low polarization, and a weak or absent 10 micron silicate feature, and type II, for which a low gas/dust ratio, high polarization, and strong silicate…
It has long been hypothesised that the Jupiter-family comets (JFCs) come from the scattered disc, an unstable planetesimal population beyond Neptune. This viewpoint has been widely accepted, but a few issues remain, the most prominent of…
In their model for the origin of the parent bodies of iron meteorites, Bottke et al proposed differentiated planetesimals that were formed in the region of 1-2 AU during the first 1.5 Myr, as the parent bodies, and suggested that these…
We present the discovery of debris systems around three solar mass stars based upon observations performed with the Spitzer Space Telescope as part of a Legacy Science Program, ``the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems'' (FEPS). We…
Debris disks around main-sequence stars are believed to derive from planetesimal populations that have accreted at early epochs and survived possible planet formation processes. While debris disks must contain solids in a broad range of…
In protoplanetary disks, small mm-cm-sized pebbles drift inwards which can aid planetary growth and influence the chemical composition of their natal disks. Gaps in protoplanetary disks can hinder the effective inward transport of pebbles…
Small bodies exist in distinct populations within their planetary systems. These reservoir populations hold a range of compositions, which to first order are dependent on formation location relative to their star. We provide a general…