Related papers: Free-Floating Planets: Not So Surprising
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…
We carry out N-body simulations to examine the effects of dynamical interactions on planetary systems in young open star clusters. We explore how the planetary populations in these star clusters evolve, and how this evolution depends on the…
Genomic complexity can be used as a clock with which the moment in which life originated can be measured. Some authors who have studied this problem have come to the conclusion that it is not possible that terrestrial life originated here…
Free-floating planets (FFPs) are the lightest products of star formation and they carry important information on the initial conditions of the environment in which they were formed. They were first discovered in the 2000s but still few of…
Planet formation is generally described in terms of a system containing the host star and a protoplanetary disc, of which the internal properties (e.g. mass and metallicity) determine the properties of the resulting planetary system.…
In this paper a cluster is modelled as a smooth potential (due to the cluster stars) plus the steady tidal field of the Galaxy. In this model there is a minimum energy below which stars cannot escape. Above this energy, however, the time…
The origin of planetary mass objects (PMOs) wandering in young star clusters remains enigmatic, especially when they come in pairs. They could represent the lowest-mass object formed via molecular cloud collapse or high-mass planets ejected…
The evolution of star clusters is studied using N-body simulations in which the evolution of single stars and binaries are taken self-consistently into account. Initial conditions are chosen to represent relatively young Galactic open…
In the solar neighborhood, where the typical relaxation timescale is larger than the cosmic age, at least 10\% to 15\% of Sun-like stars have planetary systems with Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, dense star clusters, charactered by…
We estimate the rate of collisions between stars and free-floating planets (FFPs) in globular clusters, in particular the collision of FFPs with red giant branch (RGB) stars. Recent dynamical simulations imply that the density of such…
Recent ground-based microlensing surveys suggest that our Galaxy may abound with small free floating planets, potentially up to $\sim$21 such planets per star. We explore the implication of such possibility on the mass budget for planet…
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,…
Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent years, the number of known exoplanets in star clusters remains tiny. This may be a consequence of close stellar encounters perturbing the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in…
The mass and distance functions of free-floating planets (FFPs) would give major insights into the formation and evolution of planetary systems, including any systematic differences between those in the disk and bulge. We show that the only…
An overview of our current understanding of the formation and evolution of star clusters is given, with main emphasis on high-mass clusters. Clusters form deeply embedded within dense clouds of molecular gas. Left-over gas is cleared within…
In clustered environments, stellar encounters can liberate planets from their host stars via close encounters. Although the detection probability of planets suggests that the planet population in open clusters resembles that in the field,…
Among the growing list of confirmed exoplanets, the number of planets identified in dense star clusters remains sparse. Previous analyses have suggested this may be due in part to dynamical interactions that unbind large fractions of…
Since 1995, more than 500 exoplanets have been detected using different techniques, of which 11 were detected with gravitational microlensing. Most of these are gravitationally bound to their host stars. There is some evidence of…
We present the first measurement of the mass function of free-floating planets (FFP) or very wide orbit planets down to an Earth mass, from the MOA-II microlensing survey in 2006-2014. Six events are likely to be due to planets with…
Over the past 25 years, observations have uncovered a large population of free-floating planets (FFPs), whose origins remain debated. Massive FFPs (several Jupiter masses or more) may form via gravitational collapse of molecular clouds,…