Related papers: Liquid Water Oceans in Ice Giants
We review the current understanding of the upper atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune, and explore the upcoming opportunities available to study these exciting planets. The ice giants are the least understood planets in the solar system,…
Water ice has been detected in several supernova remnants despite the strong heating and radiation in these environments. This challenges standard expectations for dust survival. Using two dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we…
Modeling the formation of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune is a long-lasting problem in planetary science. Due to gas-drag, collisional damping, and resonant shepherding, the planetary embryos repel the planetesimals away from their reach…
Most water in the universe may be superionic, and its thermodynamic and transport properties are crucial for planetary science but difficult to probe experimentally or theoretically. We use machine learning and free energy methods to…
In this paper we investigate the formation of Uranus and Neptune, according to the core-nucleated accretion model, considering formation locations ranging from 12 to 30 AU from the Sun, and with various disk solid-surface densities and core…
We present a transmission spectrum for the Neptune-size exoplanet HD 106315 c from optical to infrared wavelengths based on transit observations from the Hubble Space Telescope/Wide Field Camera 3, K2, and Spitzer. The spectrum shows…
The notion of liquid water beneath the ice layer at the south polar layered deposits of Mars is an interesting possibility given the implications for astrobiology, and possible human habitation. A body of liquid water located at a depth of…
Jupiter Trojans appear to be a key population of small bodies to study and test the models of the Solar System formation and evolution. Because understanding the evolution of Trojans can bring strong and unique constraints on the origins of…
The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…
Enceladus is believed to have a saltwater global ocean with a mean depth of at least 30~km, heated from below at the ocean-core interface and cooled at the top, where the ocean loses heat to the icy lithosphere above. This scenario suggests…
The present infrared brightness of a planet originates partly from the accretion energy that the planet gained during its formation and hence provides important constraints to the planet formation process. A planet cools down from a hot…
Methanol is a potentially important impurity in subsurface oceans on Titan and Enceladus. We report measurements of the freezing of methanol-water samples at pressures up to 350~MPa using a volumetric cell with sapphire windows. For low…
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…
Neptune remains a mysterious world that deserves further exploration and is a high-priority objective for a future planetary mission in order to better understand the formation and evolution of ice giant planets. We have developed a coupled…
Understanding the set of conditions that allow rocky planets to have liquid water on their surface -- in the form of lakes, seas or oceans -- is a major scientific step to determine the fraction of planets potentially suitable for the…
There are four different stable climate states for pure water atmospheres, as might exist on so-called "waterworlds". I map these as a function of solar constant for planets ranging in size from Mars size to 10 Earth-mass. The states are:…
Recent detection of exoplanets with Earth-like insolation attracts growing interest in how common Earth-like aqua planets are beyond the solar system. While terrestrial planets are often assumed to capture icy or water-rich planetesimals, a…
Knowing the composition of Jupiter's atmosphere is crucial for constraining Jupiter's bulk metallicity and formation history. Yet, constraining Jupiter's atmospheric water abundance is challenging due to its potential non-uniform…
The nature of sub-Neptunes remains unknown due to degeneracies in interior structure solutions. However, a statistical set of small planets with measured masses and radii can be used to test the planet formation theory prediction of large…
Although Uranus and Neptune are commonly classified as ice giants, their exact compositions remain poorly constrained. Recent studies of outer Solar System bodies challenge the traditional view that these planets are primarily…