Related papers: Water versus land on temperate rocky planets
Evidence from the solar system suggests that, unlike Venus and Mars, the presence of a strong magnetic dipole moment on Earth has helped maintain liquid water on its surface. Therefore, planetary magnetism could have a significant effect on…
We consider super-Earth sized planets which have a water mass fraction that is large enough to form an external mantle composed of high pressure water ice polymorphs and that lack a substantial H/He atmosphere. We consider such planets in…
Terrestrial planets in the Habitable Zone of Sun-like stars are priority targets for detection and observation by the next generation of space telescopes. Earth's long-term habitability may have been tied to the geological carbon cycle, a…
The habitable fraction of a planet's surface is important for the detectability of surface biosignatures. The extent and distribution of habitable areas is influenced by external parameters that control the planet's climate, atmospheric…
The atmosphere of a terrestrial planet that is replenished with secondary gases should have accumulated hydrogen-rich gas from its protoplanetary disk. Although a giant impact blows off a large fraction of the primordial atmosphere of a…
Data suggest that most rocky exoplanets with orbital period $p$ $<$ 100 d ("hot" rocky exoplanets) formed as gas-rich sub-Neptunes that subsequently lost most of their envelopes, but whether these rocky exoplanets still have atmospheres is…
Current technology is not able to map the topography of rocky exoplanets, simply because the objects are too faint and far away to resolve them. Nevertheless, indirect effect of topography should be soon observable thanks to photometry…
Progressive astronomical characterization of planet-forming disks and rocky exoplanets highlight the need for increasing interdisciplinary efforts to understand the birth and life cycle of terrestrial worlds in a unified picture. Here, we…
Nominally anhydrous minerals in rocky planet mantles can sequester oceans of water as a whole, giving a constraint on bulk water inventories. Here we predict mantle water capacities from the thermodynamically-limited solubility of water in…
Large ground- and space-based telescopes will be able to observe Earth-like planets in the near future. We explore how different planetary surfaces can strongly influence the climate, atmospheric composition, and remotely detectable spectra…
The planetary building blocks that formed in the terrestrial planet region were likely very dry, yet water is comparatively abundant on Earth. We review the various mechanisms proposed for the origin of water on the terrestrial planets.…
The delivery of water to the inner Solar System rocky planets, including Earth, remains debated, as standard models assume that they formed from dry grains, inside the snowline of the protosolar nebula. However, a recent work showed that a…
Water is fundamental to our understanding of the evolution of planetary systems and the delivery of volatiles to the surfaces of potentially habitable planets. Yet, we currently have essentially no facilities capable of observing this key…
The tidal heating of hypothetical rocky (or terrestrial) extra-solar planets spans a wide range of values depending on stellar masses and initial orbits. Tidal heating may be sufficiently large (in many cases, in excess of radiogenic…
In this study we investigated the interiors of rocky exoplanets in order to identify those that may have large quantities of water. We modelled the interiors of 28 rocky exoplanets, assuming four different layers - an iron core, a rock…
The population of small, close-in exoplanets is bifurcated into super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. We calculate physically motivated mass-radius relations for sub-Neptunes, with rocky cores and H/He dominated atmospheres, accounting for their…
Interior compositions are key for our understanding of Earth-like exoplanets. The composition of the core can influence the presence of a magnetic dynamo and the strength of gravity on the planetary surface, both of which heavily impact…
Nearly 30 years after the discovery of the first exoplanet around a main sequence star, thousands of planets have now been confirmed. These discoveries have completely revolutionized our understanding of planetary systems, revealing types…
Detailed characterization of an extrasolar planet's atmosphere provides the best hope for distinguishing the makeup of its outer layers, and the only hope for understanding the interplay between initial composition, chemistry, dynamics &…
Planet formation models suggest that the small exoplanets that migrate from beyond the snowline of the protoplanetary disk likely contain water-ice-rich cores ($\sim 50\%$ by mass), also known as the water worlds. While the observed radius…