Related papers: Ice Giants
Super-Earths, objects slightly larger than Earth and slightly smaller than Uranus, have found a special place in exoplanetary science. As a new class of planetary bodies, these objects have challenged models of planet formation at both ends…
Astronomical surveys have identified numerous exoplanets with bulk compositions that are unlike the planets of the Solar System, including rocky super-Earths and gas-enveloped sub-Neptunes. Observing the atmospheres of these objects…
Knowing the phase transformations in dense water ice is key to unraveling the peculiar geophysical properties of Uranus and Neptune, whose stratified interior models predict a thick ice layer beneath a convective ionic fluid layer. In the…
We assess the prospect of using ring seismology to probe the interiors of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. We do this by calculating normal mode spectra for different interior models of Uranus and Neptune using the stellar oscillation…
Kepler has found hundreds of Neptune-size (2-6 R_Earth) planet candidates within 0.5 AU of their stars. The nature of the vast majority of these planets is not known because their masses have not been measured. Using theoretical models of…
Noble gases are accreted to the giant planets as part of the gas component of the planet-forming disk. While heavier noble gases can separate from the evolution of the hydrogen-rich gas, helium is thought to remain at the protosolar H/He…
The present infrared brightness of a planet originates partly from the accretion energy that the planet gained during its formation and hence provides important constraints to the planet formation process. A planet cools down from a hot…
The regular satellites found around Neptune ($\approx 17~M_{\Earth}$) and Uranus ($\approx 14.5~M_{\Earth}$) suggest that past gaseous circumplanetary disks may have co-existed with solids around sub-Neptune-mass protoplanets ($<…
Uranus and Neptune exhibit fast surface zonal winds that can reach up to few hundred meters per second. Previous studies on zonal gravitational harmonics and Ohmic dissipation constraints suggest that the wind speeds diminish rapidly in…
Uranus has a tilted rotation axis, which is supposed to be caused by a giant impact. In general, an impact event also changes the internal compositional distribution and drives mass ejection from the planet, which may provide the origin of…
The shape of the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, is determined primarily by their rotation rate, and interior density distribution. It is also affected by their zonal winds, causing an anomaly of O(10 km) at low latitudes. However,…
We investigate the enrichment patterns of several delivery scenarios of the volatiles to the atmospheres of ice giants, having in mind that the only well constrained determination made remotely, i.e. the carbon abundance measurement,…
It has been a common assumption of interior models that the outer planets of our solar system are convective, and that the internal temperature distributions are therefore adiabatic. This assumption is also often applied to exoplanets.…
The Saturn System has been studied in detail by the Cassini-Huygens Mission. A major thrust of those investigations has been to understand how Saturn formed and evolved and to place Saturn in the context of other gas giants and planetary…
Neptune remains a mysterious world that deserves further exploration and is a high-priority objective for a future planetary mission in order to better understand the formation and evolution of ice giant planets. We have developed a coupled…
Determining the internal structure of Uranus is a key objective for planetary science. Knowledge of Uranus's bulk composition and the distribution of elements is crucial to understanding its origin and evolutionary path. In addition, Uranus…
Neutron stars are some of the densest manifestations of massive objects in the universe. They are ideal astrophysical laboratories for testing theories of dense matter physics and provide connections among nuclear physics, particle physics…
The purpose of this document is to discuss the scientific case of a space mission to the ice giants Uranus and Neptune and their satellite systems and its relevance to advance our understanding of the ancient past of the Solar System and,…
Ab initio free energy calculations are employed to derive the entropy of liquid and superionic water over a wide range of conditions in the interiors of Uranus and Neptune. The resulting adiabats are much shallower in pressure-temperature…
It is thought that, sometime after their formation, the solar system's giant planets experienced a dynamical instability that caused their orbits to excite, diverge, and ejected one or more objects with masses comparable to the ice giants.…