Related papers: Collisional evolution in the Vulcanoid region: Imp…
Asteroids are frequently colliding with small projectiles. Although each individual small collision is not very important, their cumulative effect can substantially change topography and also the overall shape of an asteroid. We run…
A number of authors have argued that the Sun must have been born in a cluster of no more than about 1000 stars, on the basis that, in a larger cluster, close encounters between the Sun and other stars would have truncated the outer Solar…
The under-abundance of asteroids on orbits with small perihelion distances suggests that thermally-driven disruption may be an important process in the removal of rocky bodies in the Solar System. Here we report our study of how the debris…
If the Sun was born in a relatively compact open cluster, it is quite likely that a massive (10MSun) star was nearby when it exploded in a supernova. The repercussions of a supernova can be rather profound, and the current Solar System may…
Jupiter Trojan asteroids are located around L4 and L5 Lagrangian points on relatively stable orbits, in 1:1 MMR with Jupiter. However, not all of them lie in orbits that remain stable over the age of the Solar System. Unstable zones allow…
The interactions among objects in a mean motion resonance are important for the orbital evolution of satellites and rings, especially Saturn's ring arcs and associated moons. In this work, we examine interactions among massive bodies in the…
We present observational evidence of environmental effects on the formation and evolution of planetary systems. We combine catalogues of resolved protoplanetary discs (PPDs) and young stellar objects in the solar neighbourhood to analyse…
We investigate the interaction between an eccentric planet and a less massive external debris disc. This scenario could occur after planet-planet scattering or merging events. We characterise the evolution over a wide range of initial…
Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with diameter d>100 km moving now in not very eccentric orbits could be formed directly by the compression of large rarefied dust condensations (with semi-major axes a>30 AU), but not by the accretion of…
The recent discovery of the 2003EL61 collisional family in the Kuiper belt (Brown et al., 2007) is surprising because the formation of such a family is a highly improbable event in today's belt. Assuming Brown et al.'s estimate of the size…
A group of newly observed extreme trans-Neptunian objects exhibit unexpected orbital confinement, characterized by the alignment of orbital angular momentum vectors and apsidal lines. It is proposed that an undiscovered giant planet, named…
We study the evolution of eccentricity and inclination of massive planets in low-density cavities of protoplanetary discs using three-dimensional (3D) simulations. When the planet's orbit is aligned with the equatorial plane of the disc,…
Catastrophic collisions between proto-satellites have been proposed as a possible origin of Saturn's rings. This argument relies on the concept of the equivalent circular orbit. Here, we re-examine the post-impact dynamical evolution of…
Short-period planets provide ideal laboratories for testing star-planet interaction. Planets that are smaller than $\sim$2$R_\oplus$ are considered to be largely rocky either having been stripped of or never having acquired the gaseous…
The current properties of small bodies provide important clues to their origin and history. However, how much small bodies were processed by past collisions and to what extent they retain a record of processes that took place during the…
Continuous habitability of a planet is a critical condition for advanced forms of life to appear, but it can be endangered by astronomical events such as stellar encounters. The purpose of this study is to analyze close stellar encounters…
It has been argued that the photometric data and images of the archetypical debris disk around Vega may be in contradiction with the standard, steady-state collisional scenario of the disk evolution. Here we perform physical modeling of the…
We investigate the migration of massive extrasolar planets due to gravitational interaction with a viscous protoplanetary disc. We show that a model in which planets form at 5 AU at a constant rate, before migrating, leads to a predicted…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
The outcome of collisions between small icy bodies, such as Kuiper belt objects, is poorly understood and yet a critical component of the evolution of the trans-Neptunian region. The expected physical properties of outer solar system…