Related papers: Liquid Water Oceans in Ice Giants
Surface liquid water is essential for standard planetary habitability. Calculations of atmospheric circulation on tidally locked planets around M stars suggest that this peculiar orbital configuration lends itself to the trapping of large…
Gas hydrates are considered fundamental building blocks of giant icy planets like Neptune and similar exoplanets. The existence of these materials in the interiors of giant icy planets, which are subject to high pressures and temperatures,…
Despite many similarities, there are significant observed differences between Uranus and Neptune: while Uranus is tilted and has a regular set of satellites, suggesting their accretion from a disk, Neptune's moons are irregular and are…
Experiments and computer simulations have established that liquid water's surfaces can deviate in important ways from familiar bulk behavior. Even in the simplest case of an air-water interface, distinctive layering, orientational biases,…
Large terrestrial planets are expected to have muted topography and deep oceans, implying that most super-Earths should be entirely covered in water, so-called waterworlds. This is important because waterworlds lack a silicate weathering…
It remains to be ascertained whether sub-Neptune exoplanets primarily possess hydrogen-rich atmospheres or whether a population of H$_2$O-rich "water worlds" lurks in their midst. Addressing this question requires improved modeling of…
We investigate water and deuterated water chemistry in turbulent protoplanetary disks. Chemical rate equations are solved with the diffusion term, mimicking turbulent mixing in vertical direction. Water near the midplane is transported to…
We fit an isothermal oscillatory density model of Neptune's protoplanetary disk to the surviving regular satellites and its innermost ring and we determine the radial scale length of the disk, the equation of state and the central density…
We investigate the enrichment patterns of several delivery scenarios of the volatiles to the atmospheres of ice giants, having in mind that the only well constrained determination made remotely, i.e. the carbon abundance measurement,…
A large fraction of giant planets have gaseous envelopes that are limited to about 10 % of their total mass budget. Such planets are present in the Solar System (Uranus, Neptune) and are frequently observed in short periods around other…
The interaction between a magma ocean and a primordial atmosphere is increasingly recognized as a key process in shaping planetary envelope compositions. This coupling should strongly influence gas accretion, yet its role during the…
Noble gases are accreted to the giant planets as part of the gas component of the planet-forming disk. While heavier noble gases can separate from the evolution of the hydrogen-rich gas, helium is thought to remain at the protosolar H/He…
'Empirical' models (pressure vs. density) of Uranus and Neptune interiors constrained by the gravitational coefficients J_2, J_4, the planetary radii and masses, and Voyager solid-body rotation periods are presented. The empirical…
Remote sensing data from orbiter missions have proposed that ground ice may currently exist on Mars, although the volume is still uncertain. Recent analyses of Martian meteorites have suggested that the water reservoirs have at least three…
The ever-expanding catalog of detected super-Earths calls for theoretical studies of their properties in the case of a substantial water layer. This work considers such water planets with a range of masses and water mass fractions (2 to 5…
The existence of Uranus and Neptune presents severe difficulties for the core accretion model for the formation of ice giant planets. We suggest an alternative mechanism, namely disk instability leading to the formation of gas giant…
Assuming our Solar System as typical, exomoons may outnumber exoplanets. If their habitability fraction is similar, they would thus constitute the largest portion of habitable real estate in the Universe. Icy moons in our Solar System, such…
Results from the Kepler mission indicate that the occurrence rate of small planets ($<3$ $R_\oplus$) in the habitable zone of nearby low-mass stars may be as high as 80%. Despite this abundance, probing the conditions and atmospheric…
C-H-N-O system is central for organic chemistry and biochemistry, and plays a major role in planetary science (dominating the composition of "ice giants" Uranus and Neptune). The inexhaustible chemical diversity of this system at normal…
Understanding the planetary envelope composition of sub-Neptune-type exoplanets is challenging due to the inherent degeneracy in their interior composition scenarios. Particularly, the planetary envelope's H2O/H2 ratio, which can also be…