Related papers: Can Planets survive Stellar Evolution?
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…
Stable, hydrogen-burning, M dwarf stars comprise about 75% of all stars in the Galaxy. They are extremely long-lived and because they are much smaller in mass than the Sun (between 0.5 and 0.08 MSun), their temperature and stellar…
We investigate the long-term dynamical stability of hypothetical moons orbiting extrasolar giant planets. Stellar tides brake a planet's rotation and, together with tidal migration, act to remove satellites; this process limits the…
Most stars form in star clusters and stellar associated. To understand the roles of star cluster environments in shaping the dynamical evolution of planetary systems, we carry out direct $N$-body simulations of four planetary systems models…
We have studied planetary systems which are similar to the Solar System and built up from three inner rocky planets (Venus, Earth, Mars) and two outer gas giants. The stability of the orbits of the inner planets is discussed in the cases of…
Several groups have recently suggested that small planets orbiting very closely around white dwarf stars could be promising locations for life to arise, even after stellar death. There are still many uncertainties, however, regarding the…
Planets form in the discs of gas and dust that surround young stars. It is not known whether gas giant planets on wide orbits form the same way as Jupiter or by fragmentation of gravitationally unstable discs. Here we show that a giant…
The 4.2-day orbit of the newly discovered planet around 51~Pegasi is formally unstable to tidal dissipation. However, the orbital decay time in this system is longer than the main-sequence lifetime of the central star. Given our best…
Gas giant planets are far easier than terrestrial planets to detect around other stars, and are thought to form much more quickly than terrestrial planets. Thus, in systems with giant planets, the late stages of terrestrial planet formation…
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…
Star clusters are often used as tracers of major star formation events in external galaxies as they can be studied up to much larger distances than individual stars. It is vital to understand their evolution if they are used to derive, for…
Significant numbers of free-floating planetary-mass objects have been discovered in nearby star-forming regions by the James Webb Space Telescope, including a substantial number (42) of Jupiter Mass Binary Objects ('JuMBOs') in the Orion…
Compared to planets around Sun-like stars, relatively little is known about the occurrence rate and orbital properties of planets around stars more massive than 1.3 Msun. The apparent deficit of planets around massive stars is due to a…
During the post-main sequence phase of stellar evolution the orbital distance of the habitable zone, which allows for liquid surface water on terrestrial planets, moves out past the system's original frost line, providing an opportunity for…
Theories of the formation and early evolution of planetary systems postulate that planets are born in circumstellar disks, and undergo radial migration during and after dissipation of the dust and gas disk from which they formed. The…
The majority of stars form in star clusters and many are thought to have planetary companions. We demonstrate that multi-planet systems are prone to instabilities as a result of frequent stellar encounters in these star clusters much more…
Dynamical considerations, presented herein via analytic scalings and numerical experiments, imply that Earth-mass planets accreting in regions that become habitable zones of M dwarf stars form within several million years. Temperatures in…
A planet orbiting in a disk of planetesimals can experience an instability in which it migrates to smaller orbital radii. Resonant interactions between the planet and planetesimals remove angular momentum from the planetesimals, increasing…
We conduct a systematic survey of the regions in which distant satellites can orbit stably around the four giant planets in the solar system, using orbital integrations of up to $10^9$ yr. In contrast to previous investigations, we use a…
As gas giant planets evolve, they may scatter other planets far from their original orbits to produce hot Jupiters or rogue planets that are not gravitationally bound to any star. Here, we consider planets cast out to large orbital…