Related papers: On the low-mass planethood criterion
The study of planets beyond the solar system and the search for other habitable planets and life is just beginning. Ground-based (radial velocity and transits) and space-based surveys (transits and astrometry) will identify planets spanning…
The $\beta$ Pictoris system is characterized by a dusty debris disk, in addition to the presence of two already known planets. This makes it a particularly interesting case for studying the formation and evolution of planetary systems at a…
From an astrobiological point of view, special attention has been paid to the probability of habitable planets in extrasolar systems. The purpose of this study is to constrain a possible range of the mass of a terrestrial planet that can…
The planets of the Solar System divide neatly between those with atmospheres and those without when arranged by insolation ($I$) and escape velocity ($v_{\mathrm{esc}}$). The dividing line goes as $I \propto v_{\mathrm{esc}}^4$. Exoplanets…
Small bodies, the unaccreted leftovers of planetary formation, are often mistaken for the leftovers of planetary science in the sense that they are everything else after the planets and their satellites (or sometimes just their regular…
A variety of terrestrial planets with different physical parameters and exotic atmospheres might plausibly exist outside our Solar System, waiting to be detected by the next generation of space-exploration missions. Some of these planets…
The physical bases of the detection and characterisation of extrasolar planets in the reflected light and thermal emission regimes are reviewed. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, including artefacts, in the determination of…
We seek to characterize giant-planet systems by their gravitational scattering properties. We do this to a given system by integrating it numerically along with a large number of hypothetical small bodies that are initially in eccentric…
A contribution of quantum vacuum to the energy momentum tensor is inevitably experienced in the present universe. One requires the presence of non-zero cosmological constant ($\Lambda$) to make the various observations consistent. A case of…
A balanced ratio of ocean to land is believed to be essential for an Earth-like biosphere and one may conjecture that plate-tectonics planets should be similar in geological properties. After all, the volume of continental crust evolves…
Many cosmological models assume or imply that the total size of the universe is very large, perhaps even infinite. Here we argue instead that the universe might be comparatively small, in fact not much larger than the currently observed…
We establish spectral rigidity for spherically symmetric manifolds with boundary and interior interfaces determined by discontinuities in the metric under certain conditions. Rather than a single metric, we allow two distinct metrics in…
Today, with the large number of detected exoplanets and improved measurements, we can reach the next step of planetary characterization. Classifying different populations of planets is not only important for our understanding of the…
We regard the background of space-time as a physical system composed of discrete volume elements at the Planck scale and get the internal energy of space-time by Debye model. A temperature-dependent minimum energy limit of the particles is…
(abridged) Both fundamental constants that describe the laws of physics and cosmological parameters that determine the cosmic properties must fall within a range of values in order for the universe to develop astrophysical structures and…
This paper - the first of a short series dedicated to the long-stan ding astronomical problem of de-projecting the bi-dimensional apparent morpholog y of a three-dimensional mass of gas - focuses on the density distribution in real…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
We are at a specific period of modern cosmology, during which the large increase of the amount of data leads to the idea that the determination of cosmological parameters has been achieved with a rather good precision. There is a large…
This analysis considers our universe as a closed Friedmann universe, dominated by vacuum energy in the form of a cosmological constant, with cosmological parameters obtained from full mission Planck satellite observations. A few simple…
Entanglement, or quantum inseparability, is a crucial resource in quantum information applications, and therefore the experimental generation of separated yet entangled systems is of paramount importance. Experimental demonstrations of…