Related papers: Icy worlds: Moons and Dwarf Planets
The quest for atmospheric spectral signatures that may witness biological activity in exoplanets is focused on rocky planets. The best targets for future, challenging spectroscopic observations will be selected among potentially habitable…
Most detected transiting planets have orbits which would fit within the one of Mercury, exposing them to intense stellar irradiation and interactions that significantly alter their properties. In contrast, colder planets with longer orbital…
Large terrestrial planets are expected to have muted topography and deep oceans, implying that most super-Earths should be entirely covered in water, so-called waterworlds. This is important because waterworlds lack a silicate weathering…
The ability of a planet to maintain surface water, key to life as we know it, depends on solar and planetary energy. As a star ages, it delivers more energy to a planet. As a planet ages it produces less internal heat, which leads to…
Mars provides a critical analog to once habitable exoplanets that have since lost their surface liquid water. The current atmospheric state of Mars retains the chemical fingerprints of that transition, including isotopic signatures of…
The outer solar system may provide a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life. Remote sensing data from the Galileo spacecraft suggest that the jovian icy moons, Europa, Ganymede, and possibly Callisto, may harbor liquid water oceans…
Among exoplanets, the small-size population constitutes the dominant one, with a diversity of properties and compositions ranging from rocky to gas dominated envelope. While a large fraction of them have masses and radii similar to or…
The detection of massive planets orbiting nearby stars has become almost routine, but current techniques are as yet unable to detect terrestrial planets with masses comparable to the Earth's. Future space-based observatories to detect…
Earth-like planets have anelastic mantles, whereas giant planets may have anelastic cores. As for the fluid parts of a body, the tidal dissipation of such solid regions, gravitationally perturbed by a companion body, highly depends on its…
During recent decades, data from space missions have provided strong evidence of deep liquid oceans underneath a thin outer icy crust on several moons of Jupiter, particularly Europa. But these observations have also raised many unanswered…
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…
A habitable exoplanet is a world that can maintain stable liquid water on its surface. Techniques and approaches to characterizing such worlds are essential, as performing a census of Earth-like planets that may or may not have life will…
Cycling of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and interior of rocky planets can stabilize global climate and enable planetary surface temperatures above freezing over geologic time. However, variations in global carbon budget and…
Uranus and Neptune form a distinct class of planets in our solar system. Given this fact, and ubiquity of similar-mass planets in other planetary systems, it is essential to understand their interior structure and composition. However,…
For most planets in the range of radii from 1 to 4 R$_{\oplus}$, water is a major component of the interior composition. At high pressure H${}_{2}$O can be solid, but for larger planets, like Neptune, the temperature can be too high for…
Deep elemental composition is a challenging measurement to achieve in the giant planets of the solar system. Yet, knowledge of the deep composition offers important insights in the internal structure of these planets, their evolutionary…
Models and observations suggest that ice-particle aggregation at and beyond the snowline dominates the earliest stages of planet-formation, which therefore is subject to many laboratory studies. However, the pressure-temperature gradients…
Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. Tidal dissipation in planets is intrinsically related to their internal structure. In…
Since the discovery of the first extra-solar planets, we are confronted with the puzzling diversity of planetary systems. Processes like planet radial migration in gas-disks and planetary orbital instabilities, often invoked to explain the…
Jupiter's icy moons are believed to host subsurface liquid oceans, and among them, Europa stands out as one of the most promising candidates for extraterrestrial life. Yet, the processes driving oceanic flows beneath its ice shell, as well…