Related papers: How unlikely is a doomsday catastrophe?
The Earth's comparatively massive moon, formed via a giant impact on the proto-Earth, has played an important role in the development of life on our planet, both in the history and strength of the ocean tides and in stabilizing the chaotic…
To first order, the initial cluster luminosity function appears to be universal. This means that the brightest young cluster in a galaxy can be predicted from the total number of young clusters based purely on statistics. This suggests that…
Many observed giant planets lie on eccentric orbits. Such orbits could be the result of strong scatterings with other giant planets. The same dynamical instability that produces these scatterings may also cause habitable planets in interior…
One of the most fundamental questions in exoplanetology is to determine whether a given planet is habitable. We estimate the relative likelihood of a planet's propensity towards habitability by considering key physical characteristics such…
Black hole spacetimes are semiclassically not static. For black holes whose lifetime is larger than the age of the universe we compute, in leading order, the power spectrum of deviations of the electromagnetic charge from it's average…
Based on cosmological rates, it is probable that at least once in the last Gy the Earth has been irradiated by a gamma-ray burst in our Galaxy from within 2 kpc. Using a two-dimensional atmospheric model we have performed the first…
Giant impacts by comets and asteroids have probably had an important influence on terrestrial biological evolution. We know of around 180 high velocity impact craters on the Earth with ages up to 2400Myr and diameters up to 300km. Some…
Firestone (2014) asserted evidence for numerous (23) nearby (d<300 pc) supernovae within the Middle and Late Pleistocene. If true, this would have strong implications for the irradiation of the Earth; at this rate, mass extinction level…
Multiple studies have shown that planet-planet scattering plays an important role in the dynamical evolution of planetary systems. For instance, it has been shown that planet-planet scattering can reproduce the eccentricity distribution of…
Fast radio bursts are extragalactic, sub-millisecond radio impulses of unknown origin [1,2]. Their dispersion measures, which quantify the observed frequency-dependent dispersive delays in terms of free-electron column densities,…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
"Hot super-Earths" (or "Mini-Neptunes") between 1 and 4 times Earth's size with period shorter than 100 days orbit 30-50\% of Sun-like type stars. Their orbital configuration -- measured as the period ratio distribution of adjacent planets…
Uncovering the formation process that reproduces the distinct properties of compact super-Earth exoplanet systems is a major goal of planet formation theory. The most successful model argues that non-resonant systems begin as resonant…
Many embedded star clusters do not evolve into long-lived bound clusters. The most popular explanation for this "infant mortality" of young clusters is the expulsion of natal gas by stellar winds and supernovae, which leaves up to 90% of…
Catastrophes of all kinds can be roughly defined as short duration-large amplitude events following and followed by long periods of "ripening". Major earthquakes surely belong to the class of 'catastrophic' events. Because of the space-time…
Statistical analysis of occurrence rate of magnetic storms induced by different types of interplanetary drivers is made on the basis of OMNI data for period 1976-2000. Using our catalog of large scale types of solar wind streams we study…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…
Mounting discoveries of extrasolar planets orbiting post-main sequence stars motivate studies aimed at understanding the fate of these planets. In the traditional "adiabatic" approximation, a secondary's eccentricity remains constant during…
Populations are often subject to catastrophes that cause mass removal of individuals. Many stochastic growth models have been considered to explain such dynamics. Among the results reported, it has been considered whether dispersion…
Of the solar system's four terrestrial planets, the origin of Mercury is perhaps the most mysterious. Modern numerical simulations designed to model the dynamics of terrestrial planet formation systematically fail to replicate Mercury;…