This chapter is to be published in the second edition of the Treatise on Geophysics (Eds. T. Spohn, G. Schubert). 42 pages, 16 figures. Accepted 25 February 2014
We review the interior structure and evolution of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and giant exoplanets with particular emphasis on constraining their global composition. Compared to the first edition of this review, we provide a new discussion of the atmospheric compositions of the solar system giant planets, we discuss the discovery of oscillations of Jupiter and Saturn, the significant improvements in our understanding of the behavior of material at high pressures and the consequences for interior and evolution models. We place the giant planets in our Solar System in context with the trends seen for exoplanets.
The best constraints on the internal structures of giant planets have historically come from measurements of their gravity fields. These gravity data are inherently mostly sensitive to a planet's outer regions, providing only loose constraints on the deep interiors of Jupiter and Saturn. This fundamental limitation stymies efforts to measure the mass and compactness of these planets' cores, crucial properties for understanding their formation pathways and evolution. However, studies of Saturn's rings have revealed waves driven by pulsation modes within Saturn, offering independent seismic prob…
As it has already done for Earth, the sun, and the stars, seismology has the potential to radically change the way the interiors of giant planets are studied. In a sequence of events foreseen by only a few, observations of Saturn's rings by the Cassini spacecraft have rapidly broken ground on giant planet seismology. Gravity directly couples the planet's normal mode oscillations to the orbits of ring particles, generating spiral waves whose frequencies encode Saturn's internal structure and rotation. These modes have revealed a stably stratified region near Saturn's center, and provided a new …
Atmospheric metal enrichment (i.e., elements heavier than helium, also called "metallicity") is a key diagnostic of the formation of giant planets. The giant planets of the solar system exhibit an inverse relationship between mass and both their bulk metallicities and atmospheric metallicities. Extrasolar giant planets also display an inverse relationship between mass and bulk metallicity. However, there is significant scatter in the relationship and it is not known how atmospheric metallicity correlates with either planet mass or bulk metallicity. Here we show that the Saturn-mass exoplanet H…
With the advent of direct imaging spectroscopy, the number of spectra from brown dwarfs and extrasolar gas giants is growing rapidly. Many brown dwarfs and extrasolar gas giants exhibit spectroscopic and photometric variability, which is likely the result of weather patterns. However, for the foreseeable future, point-source observations will be the only viable method to extract brown dwarf and exoplanet spectra. Models have been able to reproduce the observed variability, but ground truth observations are required to verify their results. To that end, we provide visual and near-infrared spect…
Revealing the true nature of the gas giant planets in our Solar System is challenging. The masses of Jupiter and Saturn are about 318 and 95 Earth masses, respectively. While they mostly consist of hydrogen and helium, the total mass and distribution of the heavier elements, which reveal information on their origin, are still unknown. Recent accurate measurements of the gravitational fields of Jupiter and Saturn together with knowledge of the behavior of planetary materials at high pressures allow us to better constrain their interiors. Updated structure models of Jupiter and Saturn suggest th…
Saturn's rings act as a system of innumerable test particles that are remarkably sensitive to periodic disturbances in the planet's gravitational field. We identify 15 additional density and bending waves in Saturn's C ring driven by the planet's internal normal mode oscillations. Taking advantage of a highly accurate absolute radius scale for the rings, we are able to detect weak, high-wavenumber (up to m=14) waves with km-scale radial wavelengths. From a systematic scan of the entire C ring, we report the discovery and identification of 11 new Outer Lindblad Resonances (OLRs), two counterpar…
The innovative Saturn Ring Skimmer mission concept enables a wide range of investigations that address fundamental questions about Saturn and its rings, as well as giant planets and astrophysical disk systems in general. This mission would provide new insights into the dynamical processes that operate in astrophysical disk systems by observing individual particles in Saturn's rings for the first time. The Ring Skimmer would also constrain the origin, history, and fate of Saturn's rings by determining their compositional evolution and material transport rates. In addition, the Ring Skimmer woul…
Up to date, only 13 firmly established triple microlensing events have been discovered, so the occurrence rates of microlensing two-planet systems and planets in binary systems are still uncertain. With the upcoming space-based microlensing surveys, hundreds of triple microlensing events will be detected. To provide clues for future observations and statistical analyses, we initiate a project to investigate the detectability of triple-lens systems with different configurations and observational setups. As the first step, in this work we develop the simulation software and investigate the detec…
The obliquity of a planet is the tilt between its equator and its orbital plane. Giant planets are expected to form with near-zero obliquities. After its formation, some dynamical mechanism must therefore have tilted Saturn up to its current obliquity of 26.7°. This event is traditionally thought to have happened more than 4 Gyrs ago during the late planetary migration because of the crossing of a resonance between the spin-axis precession of Saturn and the nodal orbital precession mode of Neptune. Here, we show that the fast tidal migration of Titan measured by Lainey et al. (2020) is incompa…
Context: As a result of Titan's migration and Saturn's probable capture in secular spin-orbit resonance, recent works show that Saturn's obliquity could be steadily increasing today and may reach large values in the next billions of years. Satellites around high-obliquity planets are known to be unstable near their Laplace radius, but the approximations used so far are invalidated in this regime. Aims: We aim to investigate the behaviour of a planet and its satellite when the satellite crosses its Laplace radius while the planet is locked in secular spin-orbit resonance. Methods: We expand on …