Related papers: Reaccumulation process after a catastrophic disrup…
The occurrence rate of cold Jupiters was found to depend on stellar mass. The formation environment in the protoplanetary disks regulates core formation and the subsequent gas accretion. In this study, we simulate giant planet formation via…
A tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs when a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole and gets torn apart by its gravitational tidal field. After the disruption, the stellar debris form an expanding gaseous stream. The morphology…
Post-main-sequence planetary science has been galvanised by the striking variability, depth and shape of the photometric transit curves due to objects orbiting white dwarf WD 1145+017, a star which also hosts a dusty debris disc and…
This article discusses how re-emission of absorbed solar light by centimeter- to decimeter-sized structures on the surface of an asteroid can create a component of the recoil force parallel to the surface. Under certain conditions the west…
A tidal disruption event (TDE) -- when a star is destroyed by the immense gravitational field of a supermassive black hole -- transforms a star into a stream of tidally-shredded debris. The properties of this debris ultimately determine the…
The migration of cohesive regolith on the surface of an otherwise monolithic or strong asteroid is studied using theoretical and simulation models. The theory and simulations show that under an increasing spin rate (such as due to the YORP…
Super-Mercuries, rocky exoplanets with bulk iron mass fraction of more than 60 per cent, appear to be preferentially hosted by stars with higher iron mass fraction than the Earth. It is unclear whether these iron-rich planets can form in…
Giant planet formation in the core accretion (CA) paradigm is predicated by the formation of a core, assembled by the coagulation of grains and later by planetesimals within a protoplanetary disc. In contrast, in the disc instability…
We consider how an impact generated seismic pulse affects the surface of an asteroid distant from the impact site. With laboratory experiments on dry polydisperse gravel mixtures, we track the trajectories of particles ejected from the…
Planet formation is thought to occur in discs around young stars by the aggregation of small dust grains into much larger objects. The growth from grains to pebbles and from planetesimals to planets is now fairly well understood. The…
The Juno mission has provided an accurate determination of Jupiter's gravitational field, which has been used to obtain information about the planet's composition and internal structure. Several models of Jupiter's structure that fit the…
When a planet becomes massive enough, it gradually carves a partial gap around its orbit in the protoplanetary disk. A pressure maximum can be formed outside the gap where solids that are loosely coupled to the gas, typically in the pebble…
We used an N-body smoothed particle hydrodynamics algorithm, with a detailed treatment of star formation, supernovae feedback, and chemical enrichment, to perform eight simulations of mergers between gas-rich disc galaxies. We vary the mass…
We present a calculation of the sedimentation of grains in a giant gaseous protoplanet such as that resulting from a disk instability of the type envisioned by Boss (1998). Boss (1998) has suggested that such protoplanets would form cores…
Low-mass stars appear to frequently host planetary systems. When these rocky planets develop high eccentricities as a result of secular torques or dynamical scatterings, they occasionally pass close to the host star. In these close…
Pebble accretion refers to the assembly of rocky planet cores from particles whose velocity dispersions are damped by drag from circumstellar disc gas. Accretion cross-sections can approach maximal Hill-sphere scales for particles whose…
We study the efficiency of forming large bodies, starting from a sea of equal-sized planetesimals. This is likely one of the earlier steps of planet formation and relevant for the formation of the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt and…
A statistical analysis of brightness variability of asteroids reveals how their shapes evolve from elongated to rough spheroidal forms, presumably driven by impact-related phenomena. Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object…
We consider the Roche critical density (rho_Roche), the minimum density of an orbiting object that, at a given distance from its planet, is able to hold itself together by self-gravity. It is directly related to the more familiar "Roche…
Modelling the formation of super-km-sized planetesimals by gravitational collapse of regions overdense in small particles requires numerical algorithms capable of handling simultaneously hydrodynamics, particle dynamics and particle…