Related papers: Minor planets, asteroids, comets and interplanetar…
Main sequence stars, like the Sun, are often found to be orbited by circumstellar material that can be categorized into two groups, planets and debris. The latter is made up of asteroids and comets, as well as the dust and gas derived from…
With the increasing number of detected exoplanet samples, the statistical properties of planetary systems have become much clearer. In this review, we summarize the major statistics that have been revealed mainly by radial velocity and…
Debris disk is a catch-all term that can be used to refer to any component of a planetary system which is not an actual planet. In the Solar System this refers to the asteroids and comets in the Asteroid and Kuiper belts as well as the dust…
A question central to understanding the origin of our solar system is: how do planets form in circumstellar disks around young stars? Because of the complex nature of the physical processes involved, multi-wavelength observations of large…
A quadrillion previously unnoticed small bodies beyond Neptune have been spotted as they dimmed X-rays from a distant source. Models of the dynamics of debris in the Solar System's suburbs must now be reworked.
Given the fact that Earth is so far the only place in the Milky Way galaxy known to harbor life, the question arises of whether the solar system is in any way special. To address this question, I compare the solar system to the many…
Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent years, the number of known exoplanets in star clusters remains tiny. This may be a consequence of close stellar encounters perturbing the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in…
A new theoretical hypothesis on the origin and formation of the solar and extrasolar planetary systems is summarized and briefly discussed in the light of recent detections of extrasolar planets, and studies of shock wave interaction with…
Ecosystems are systems where energy flows and material cycles are maintained in an apparently stable, but non-equilibrium state through a process of self-regulation. Such a definition does just apply to biological systems, it can also apply…
Exoplanets are organized in a broad array of orbital configurations that reflect their formation along with billions of years of dynamical processing through gravitational interactions. This history is encoded in the angular momentum…
We compile a systematic mass inventory of the Solar System excluding the Sun, drawing on spacecraft measurements, planetary ephemerides, and population surveys of small-body populations including main-belt asteroids and trans-Neptunian…
We have studied planetary systems which are similar to the Solar System and built up from three inner rocky planets (Venus, Earth, Mars) and two outer gas giants. The stability of the orbits of the inner planets is discussed in the cases of…
Extrasolar planets abound in almost any possible configuration. However, until five years ago, there was a lack of planets orbiting closer than 0.5 au to giant or subgiant stars. Since then, recent detections have started to populated this…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
We report the relative abundances of 17 elements in the atmosphere of the white dwarf star GD 362, material that, very probably, was contained previously in a large asteroid or asteroids with composition similar to the Earth/Moon system.…
Since very recently, we acquired knowledge on the existence of comets in extrasolar planetary systems. The formation of comets together with planets around host stars now seems evident. As stars are often born in clusters of interstellar…
Giant planets are tens to thousands of times as massive as the Earth, and many times as large. Most of their volumes are occupied by hydrogen and helium, the primary constituents of the protostellar disks from which they formed.…
Given the inexorable increase in the Sun's luminosity, Earth will exit the habitable zone in ~1 Gyr. There is a negligible chance that Earth's orbit will change during that time through internal Solar System dynamics. However, there is a…
Planetary systems have their origin in the gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. Through a process of accretion, is formed a massive star and a disk of planetesimals orbiting the star. Using a formalism analogous to quantum…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…