Related papers: Oort Cloud Ecology -- IV. Exchanging Asteroids
We examine the pattern of star birth in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC), with the goal of discerning the cluster's formation mechanism. Outside of the Trapezium, the distribution of stellar masses is remarkably uniform, and is not accurately…
We present results from the largest numerical simulation of star formation to resolve the fragmentation process down to the opacity limit. The simulation follows the collapse and fragmentation of a large-scale turbulent molecular cloud to…
We have investigated the effect of stellar encounters on the formation and disruption of the Oort cloud using the classical impulse approximation. We calculate the evolution of a planetesimal disk into a spherical Oort cloud due to the…
The existence of the Oort Comet Cloud, the Kuiper Belt, and plausible inefficiencies in planetary core formation, all suggest that there was once a residual planetesimal disk of mass 10-100 Earth-masses in the vicinity of the giant planets…
Gas giant planets have been detected on eccentric orbits several hundreds of astronomical units in size around other stars. It has been proposed that even the Sun hosts a wide-orbit planet of 5-10 Earth masses, often called Planet Nine,…
Close encounters between stars in star forming regions are important as they can perturb or destroy protoplanetary discs, young planetary systems, and stellar multiple systems. We simulate simple, viralised, equal-mass $N$-body star…
Stars formed in clusters can encounter other stars at close distances. In typical open clusters in the Solar neighbourhood containing hundreds or thousands of member stars, ten to twenty per cent of Solar-mass member stars are expected to…
Most formation scenarios of globular clusters assume a molecular cloud as the progenitor of the stellar system. However, it is still unclear, how this cloud is transformed into a star cluster, i.e. how the destructive processes related to…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
Previous investigations have revealed that eccentric super-Earths represent a class of planets which are particularly effective at transporting minor bodies towards white dwarfs and subsequently polluting their atmospheres with observable…
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…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
It has recently been shown that stellar clustering plays an important role in shaping the properties of planetary systems. We investigate how the multiplicity distributions and orbital periods of planetary systems depend on the 6D phase…
The stellar-dynamical evolution of bound star clusters during the first few Myr is dominated by binary-binary and binary-star interactions, the rapid sinking of the most massive stars to the centre of the clusters and mass loss from…
Star clusters with a high central density contain an ecological network of evolving binaries, affected by interactions with passing stars, while in turn affecting the energy budget of the cluster as a whole by giving off binding energy.…
Revealing the mechanisms shaping the architecture of planetary systems is crucial for our understanding of their formation and evolution. In this context, it has been recently proposed that stellar clustering might be the key in shaping the…
Tidally limited star clusters are started on nearly circular orbits in the dark matter sub-halos present at high redshift and evolved with an n-body code augmented with gravitational interactions in the clusters. The tidally removed stars…
We examine the properties of embedded clusters within 1 kiloparsec using new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as recent results from 2MASS and other ground-based near-infrared surveys. We use surveys of entire molecular clouds…
Context: Distant trans-Neptunian objects are subject to planetary perturbations and galactic tides. The former decrease with the distance, while the latter increase. In the intermediate regime where they have the same order of magnitude…
A numerical simulation of the Oort cloud is used to explain the observed orbital distributions and numbers of Jupiter-family and Halley-type short-period comets. Comets are given initial orbits with perihelion distances between 5 and 36 AU,…