Related papers: Astronomical engineering: a strategy for modifying…
We used recently produced Solar System ephemerides, which incorporate two years of ranging observations to the MESSENGER spacecraft, to extract the secular orbital elements for Mercury and associated uncertainties. As Mercury is in a stable…
Photosynthetic life requires sufficient photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to metabolise. On Earth, plant behaviour, physiology and metabolism are sculpted around the night-day cycle by an endogenous biological circadian clock. The…
The dynamical interaction of minor bodies (such as comets or asteroids) with planets plays an essential role in the planetary system's architecture and evolution. As a result of these interactions, structures like the Kuiper belt and the…
Exoplanet surveys have confirmed one of humanity's (and all teenagers') worst fears: we are weird. If our Solar System were observed with present-day Earth technology -- to put our system and exoplanets on the same footing -- Jupiter is the…
Earth-scale planets in the classical habitable zone (HZ) are more likely to be habitable if they possess active geophysics. Without a constant internal energy source, planets cool as they age, eventually terminating tectonic activity and…
The architecture of exoplanetary systems is often different from the solar system, with some exoplanets being in close orbits around their host stars and having orbital periods of only a few days. In analogy to interactions between stars in…
I calculate the classical effects induced by an isotropic mass loss of a body on the orbital motion of a test particle around it. By applying my results to the phase in which the radius of the Sun, already moved to the Red Giant Branch of…
Stellar activity and planetary atmospheric properties have the potential to strongly influence habitability. To date, neither have been adequately studied in the multiverse context, so there has been no assessment of how these effects…
Kepler's primary mission is a search for earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zone of late-type stars using the transit method. To effectively accomplish this mission, Kepler orbits the Sun and stares nearly continuously at one…
This white paper discusses a repurposed mission for the Kepler spacecraft that focusses on solving outstanding problems in planet formation and evolution by targeting the study of the hot Jupiter population of young stars. This mission can…
Planet Planet scattering is a leading dynamical mechanism invoked to explain the present orbital distribution of exoplanets. Many stars belong to binary systems, therefore it is important to understand how this mechanism works in presence…
The evolution of contact binary star systems in mass asymmetry (transfer) coordinate is considered. The orbital period changes is explained by an evolution in mass asymmetry towards the symmetry (symmetrization of binary system). It is…
Asteroid collisions are one of the main processes responsible for the evolution of bodies in the main belt. Using observations of the Dimorphos impact by the DART spacecraft, we estimate how asteroid collisions in the main belt may look in…
Information transmission via communication between agents is ubiquitous on Earth, and is a vital facet of living systems. In this paper, we aim to quantify this rate of information transmission associated with Earth's biosphere and…
Kepler-730 is a planetary system hosting a statistically validated hot Jupiter in a 6.49-day orbit and an additional transiting candidate in a 2.85-day orbit. We use spectroscopic radial velocities from the APOGEE-2N instrument, Robo-AO…
Most major planetary bodies in the solar system rotate in the same direction as their orbital motion: their spin is prograde. Theoretical studies to explain the direction as well as the magnitude of the spin vector have had mixed success.…
In this paper we investigate the evolution of a pair of interacting planets - a Jupiter mass planet and a Super-Earth with the 5.5 Earth masses - orbiting a Solar type star and embedded in a gaseous protoplanetary disc. We focus on the…
The intensity and energy spectrum of energetic charged radiation in the heliosphere are significantly influenced by solar activity. This phenomenon is known as solar modulation of galactic cosmic rays. As interplanetary travel becomes a…
In this paper we consider a new mechanism for stopping the inward migration of a low-mass planet embedded in a gaseous protoplanetary disc. It operates when a low-mass planet (for example a super-Earth), encounters outgoing density waves…
The habitable zone is the main tool that mission architectures utilize to select potentially habitable planets for follow up spectroscopic observation. Given its importance, the precise size and location of the habitable zone remains a hot…