Related papers: Direct contact binary planetesimal formation from …

With the discovery of Kuiper Belt binaries that have wide separations and roughly equal masses new theories were proposed to explain their formation. Two formation scenarios were suggested by Goldreich and collaborators: In the first,…

The trans-Neptunian object 2014 MU69, named Arrokoth, is the most recent evidence that planetesimals did not form by successive collisions of smaller objects, but by the direct gravitational collapse of a pebble cloud. But what process sets…

Context. Abridged. Many stars are members of binary systems. During early phases when the stars are surrounded by discs, the binary orbit and disc midplane may be mutually inclined. The discs around T Tauri stars will become mildly warped…

While contact binary objects are common in the solar system, their formation mechanism is unclear. In this work we examine several contact binaries and calculate the necessary strength parameters that allow the two lobes to merge without…

The consistency of planet formation models suffers from the disconnection between the regime of small and large bodies. This is primarily caused by so-called growth barriers: the direct growth of larger bodies is halted at centimetre-sized…

It has been observed that binary Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) exist contrary to theoretical expectations. Their creation presents problems to most current models. However, the inclusion of a third body (for example, one of the outer planets)…

The formation of planetesimals is expected to occur via particle-gas instabilities that concentrate dust into self-gravitating clumps. Triggering these instabilities requires the prior pileup of dust in the protoplanetary disk. Until now,…

The optical images of near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis acquired by Chang'e-2 spacecraft show that Toutatis has an elongated contact binary configuration, with the contact point located along the long axis. We speculate that such…

The process by which a system of non-luminous bodies form around a star is fundamental to understanding the origins of our own solar system and how it fits into the context of other systems we have begun to study around other stars. Some…

Kilometre-sized planetesimals form from pebbles of a range of sizes. We present the first simulations of the streaming instability that begin with a realistic, peaked size distribution, as expected from grain growth predictions. Our 3D…

Recent observations have revealed an unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that populate the Kuiper-belt. The discovered binaries have four characteristics they comprise a few percent of the TNOs, the…

The mean angular momentum associated with the collision of two celestial objects moving in almost circular heliocentric orbits was studied. The results of these studies were used to develop models of the formation of binaries at the stage…

We examine the formation of planets around binary stars in light of the recently discovered systems Kepler 16, 34 and 35. We conduct hydrodynamical simulations of self gravitating disks around binary systems. The selected binary and disk…

Many massive objects have been found in the outer region of the Solar system. How they were formed and evolved has not been well understood, although there have been intensive studies on accretion process of terrestrial planets. One of the…

Stellar perturbations affect planet-formation in binary systems. Recent studies show that the planet-formation stage of mutual accretion of km-sized planetesimals is most sensitive to binary effects. In this paper, the condition for…

The processes that led to the formation of the planetary bodies in the Solar System are still not fully understood. Using the results obtained with the comprehensive suite of instruments on-board ESA's Rosetta mission, we present evidence…

Recent observations from NASA's Kepler mission detected the first planets in circumbinary orbits. The question we try to answer is where these planets formed in the circumbinary disk and how far inside they migrated to reach their present…

Most detected planet-bearing binaries are in wide orbits, for which a high inclination, $i_B$, between the binary orbital plane and the plane of the planetary disk around the primary is likely to be common. In this paper, we investigate the…

We present a model in which planetesimal disks are built from the combination of planetesimal formation and accretion of radially drifting pebbles onto existing planetesimals. In this model, the rate of accretion of pebbles onto…

Recent spacecraft and radar observations have found that ~70 percent of short-period comet nuclei, mostly Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), have bilobate shapes (two masses connected by a narrow neck). This is in stark contrast to the shapes of…