Recent observations of rocky super-Earths have revealed an apparent wider distribution of Fe/Mg ratios, or core to mantle ratios, than the planets in our Solar System. This study aims to understand how much of the chemical diversity in the super-Earth population can arise from giant impacts during planetary formation. Planet formation simulations have only recently begun to treat collisions more realistically in an attempt to replicate the planets in our Solar System. We investigate planet formation more generally by simulating the formation of rocky super-Earths with varying initial conditions using a version of SyMBA, a gravitational N-body code, that incorporates realistic collisions. We track the maximum plausible change in composition after each impact. The final planets span a range of Fe/Mg ratios similar to the Solar System planets, but do not completely match the distribution in super-Earth data. We only form a few planets with minor iron-depletion, suggesting other mechanisms are at work. The most iron-rich planets have a lower Fe/Mg ratio than Mercury, and are less enriched than planets such as Kepler-100b. This indicates that further work on our understanding of planet formation and further improvement of precision of mass and radius measurements are required to explain planets at the extremes of this Fe/Mg distribution.
A leading model for the origin of super-Earths proposes that planetary embryos migrate inward and pile up on close-in orbits. As large embryos are thought to preferentially form beyond the snow line, this naively predicts that most super-Earths should be very water-rich. Here we show that the shortest-period planets formed in the migration model are often purely rocky. The inward migration of icy embryos through the terrestrial zone accelerates the growth of rocky planets via resonant shepherding. We illustrate this process with a simulation that provided a match to the Kepler-36 system of two…
Earth-Like is an interactive website and twitter bot that allows users to explore changes in the average global surface temperature of an Earth-like planet due to variations in the surface oceans and emerged land coverage, rate of volcanism (degassing), and the level of the received solar radiation. The temperature is calculated using a simple carbon-silicate cycle model to change the level of $\rm CO_2$ in the atmosphere based on the chosen parameters. The model can achieve a temperature range exceeding $-100^\circ$C to $100^\circ$C by varying all three parameters, including freeze-thaw cycle…
We study the masses and radii of 65 exoplanets smaller than 4 Earth radii with orbital periods shorter than 100 days. We calculate the weighted mean densities of planets in bins of 0.5 Earth radii and identify a density maximum of 7.6 g/cc at 1.4 Earth radii. Planets with radii up to R = 1.5 Earth radii increase in density with increasing radius. Above 1.5 Earth radii, planet density rapidly decreases with increasing radius, indicating that these planets have a large fraction of volatiles by volume overlying a rocky core. Including the solar system terrestrial planets with the exoplanets below…
Super-Earths and mini-Neptunes exhibit great diversity in their compositional and orbital properties. Their bulk densities span a large range, from those dense enough to be purely rocky to those needing a substantial contribution from volatiles to their volumes. Their orbital configurations range from compact, circular multi-transiting systems like Kepler-11 to systems like our Solar System's terrestrial planets with wider spacings and modest but significant eccentricities and mutual inclinations. Here we investigate whether a continuum of formation conditions resulting from variation in the a…
The recent discovery of potentially habitable exoplanets around Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1 has attracted much attention due to their potential for hosting life. We delineate a simple model that accurately describes the evolution of biological diversity on Earth. Combining this model with constraints on atmospheric erosion and the maximal evolutionary timescale arising from the star's lifetime, we arrive at two striking conclusions: (i) Earth-analogs orbiting low-mass M-dwarfs are unlikely to be inhabited, and (ii) K-dwarfs and some G-type stars are potentially capable of hosting more comp…
Previous work on possible surface reflectance biosignatures for Earth-like planets has typically focused on analogues to spectral features produced by photosynthetic organisms on Earth, such as the vegetation red edge. Although oxygenic photosynthesis, facilitated by pigments evolved to capture photons, is the dominant metabolism on our planet, pigmentation has evolved for multiple purposes to adapt organisms to their environment. We present an interdisciplinary study of the diversity and detectability of nonphotosynthetic pigments as biosignatures, which includes a description of environments…
Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history. For example, molecular oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere today but was absent on the early Earth. Meanwhile, the physical and chemical evolution of Earth's atmosphere has also resulted in major swings in surface temperature, at times resulting in extreme glaciation or warm greenhouse climates. Despite this dynamic and occasionally dramatic history, the Earth has been persistently habitable--and, in fact, inhabite…
Several studies, observational and theoretical, suggest that planetary systems with only rocky planets should be the most common in the Universe. We study the diversity of planetary systems that might form around Sun-like stars in low-mass disks without giant planets. We focus on the formation process of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone (HZ) and analyze their water contents with the goal to determine systems of astrobiological interest. Besides, we study the formation of planets on wide orbits because they can be detected with the microlensing technique. N-body simulations of high res…
Prior work has found that a variety of terrestrial planetary compositions are expected to occur within known extrasolar planetary systems. However, such studies ignored the effects of giant planet migration, which is thought to be very common in extra-solar systems. Here we present calculations of the compositions of terrestrial planets that formed in dynamical simulations incorporating varying degrees of giant planet migration. We used chemical equilibrium models of the solid material present in the disks of five known planetary host stars: the Sun, GJ 777, HD4203, HD19994 and HD213240. Giant…
Probing the Taxonomic Diversity of the Small Near-Earth Object Population
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国国家航空航天局戈达德太空飞行中心）；Northern Arizona University（北亚利桑那大学）；Stuttgart Technical University of Applied Science（斯图加特应用技术大学）；European Southern Observatory（欧洲南方天文台）
Recent progress in transit photometry opened a new window to the interior of super-Earths. From measured radii and masses, we can infer planetary internal compositions. It has been recently revealed that super-Earths are diverse in composition. Such a diversity is thought to arise from diversity in volatile content. The stability of the volatile components is to be examined, because hot super-Earths undergo photo-evaporative mass loss. While several studies investigated the impact of photo-evaporative mass loss on hydrogen-helium envelopes, there are few studies as to the impact on water-vapor…
Star compositions are essential for examining densities and compositional ranges of rocky exoplanets, testing their similarity to Earth. Stellar elemental abundances and planetary orbital data show that of the ~5000 known minerals, exoplanetary silicate mantles will contain mostly olivine, orthopyroxene, and clinopyroxene, $\pm$ quartz, and magnesiuwustite at the extremes; wholly exotic mineralogies are likely absent. Understanding these exotic geological systems requires a better marriage of geological insights to astronomical data. The study of exoplanets is like a mirror, reflecting our inc…
The coupled interior-atmosphere system of terrestrial exoplanets remains poorly understood. Exoplanets show a wide variety of sizes, densities, surface temperatures, and interior structures, with important knock-on effects for this coupled system. Many exoplanets are predicted to have a "stagnant lid" at the surface, with a rigid stationary crust, sluggish mantle convection, and only minor volcanism. However, if exoplanets have Earth-like plate tectonics, which involves several discrete, slowly moving plates and vigorous tectono-magmatic activity, then this may be critical for planetary habita…
The recent discovery of a staggering diversity of planets beyond the Solar System has brought with it a greatly expanded search space for habitable worlds. The Kepler exoplanet survey has revealed that most planets in our interstellar neighborhood are larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune. Collectively termed super-Earths and mini-Neptunes, some of these planets may have the conditions to support liquid water oceans, and thus Earth-like biology, despite differing in many ways from our own planet. In addition to their quantitative abundance, super-Earths are relatively large and are thus m…
Astrophysical observations reveal a large diversity of radii and masses of exoplanets. It is important to characterize the interiors of exoplanets to understand planetary diversity and further determine how unique, or not, Earth is. Assessing interior structure is challenging because there are few data and large uncertainties. Thus, for a given exoplanet a range of interior structure models can satisfy available data. Typically, interior models aim to constrain the radial structure and composition of the core and mantle, and additionally ice, ocean, and gas layer if appropriate. Constraining t…
We consider the origin of compact, short-period, Jupiter-mass planets. We propose that their diverse structure is caused by giant impacts of embryos and super-Earths or mergers with other gas giants during the formation and evolution of these hot Jupiters. Through a series of numerical simulations, we show that typical head-on collisions generally lead to total coalescence of impinging gas giants. Although extremely energetic collisions can disintegrate the envelope of gas giants, these events seldom occur. During oblique and moderately energetic collisions, the merger products retain higher f…
Probing the connection between a star's metallicity and the presence and properties of any associated planets offers an observational link between conditions during the epoch of planet formation and mature planetary systems. We explore this connection by analyzing the metallicities of Kepler target stars and the subset of stars found to host transiting planets. After correcting for survey incompleteness, we measure planet occurrence: the number of planets per 100 stars with a given metallicity $M$. Planet occurrence correlates with metallicity for some, but not all, planet sizes and orbital pe…
Using the Kepler planet sample from Buchhave et al. and the statistical method clarified by Schlaufman, I show that the shorter-period super-Earths have a different dependence on the host star metallicity from the longer-period super-Earths, with the transition period being in the period range from 70 to 100 days. The hosts of shorter-period super-Earths are on average more metal-rich than those of longer-period super-Earths. The existence of such a transition period cannot be explained by any single theory of super-Earth formation, suggesting that super-Earths have formed via at least two mec…
Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of dynamical models of late-stage terrestrial planet formation within known extrasolar planetary systems with chemical equilibrium models of the composition of solid material within the disk. This allows us to constrain the bulk elemental composition of extrasolar terrestrial planets. A wide variety of resulting planetary compositions exist, ranging from those tha…
An outstanding, multi-disciplinary goal of modern science is the study of the diversity of potentially Earth-like planets and the search for life in them. This goal requires a bold new generation of space telescopes, but even the most ambitious designs yet hope to characterize several dozen potentially habitable planets. Such a sample may be too small to truly understand the complexity of exo-earths. We describe here a notional concept for a novel space observatory designed to characterize 1,000 transiting exo-earth candidates. The Nautilus concept is based on an array of inflatable spacecraft…
Exoplanet research focusing on the characterization of super-Earths is currently limited to those handful targets orbiting bright stars that are amenable to detailed study. This Letter proposes to look at alternative avenues to probe the surface and atmospheric properties of this category of planets, known to be ubiquitous in our galaxy. I conduct Markov Chain Monte Carlo lightcurve analyses for 97 Kepler close-in $R_P \lesssim 2.0 R_{\oplus}$ super-Earth candidates with the aim to detect their occultations at visible wavelengths. Brightness temperatures and geometric albedos in the Kepler ban…
Hot super-Earths are exoplanets with masses < 10 Earth masses and orbital periods < 20 days. Around 8 hot super-Earths have been discovered in the neighborhood of solar system. In this lecture, we review the mechanisms for the formation of hot super-Earths, dynamical effects that play important roles in sculpting the architecture of the multiple planetary systems. Two example systems (HD 40307 and GJ 436) are presented to show the formation and evolution of hot super-Earths or Neptunes.
Super-Earths with orbital periods less than 100 days are extremely abundant around Sun-like stars. It is unlikely that these planets formed at their current locations. Rather, they likely formed at large distances from the star and subsequently migrated inward. Here we use N-body simulations to study the effect of super-Earths on the accretion of rocky planets. In our simulations, one or more super-Earths migrates inward through a disk of planetary embryos and planetesimals embedded in a gaseous disk. We tested a wide range of migration speeds and configurations. Fast-migrating super-Earths ($…
Extrasolar planet host stars have been found to be enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the composition of material available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of dynamical models of late-stage terrestrial planet formation within known extrasolar planetary systems with chemical equilibrium models of the composition of solid material within the disk. This allows us to determine the bulk elemental composition of simulated extrasolar terrestrial planets. A wide variety of resulting planetary compositi…
With N-body simulations of a planetary system with an asteroid belt we investigate how the asteroid impact rate on the Earth is affected by the architecture of the planetary system. We find that the $ν_6$ secular resonance plays an important role in the asteroid collision rate with the Earth. Compared to exoplanetary systems, the solar system is somewhat special in its lack of a super-Earth mass planet in the inner solar system. We therefore first consider the effects of the presence of a super-Earth in the terrestrial planet region. We find a significant effect for super-Earths with a mass of…
We report relations between inner ($<1$ au) super Earths (planets with mass/radius between Earth and Neptune) and outer ($>1$ au) giant planets (mass $>0.3~M_{\rm J}$, or cold Jupiters) around Sun-like stars, based on data from both ground-based radial velocity (RV) observations and the Kepler mission. We find that cold Jupiters appear three times more often around hosts of super Earths than they do around field stars. Given the prevalence of the super Earth systems, their cold Jupiters can account for nearly all cold Jupiters. In other words, cold Jupiters are almost certainly ($\sim90\%$) co…
Planets of 1-4 times Earth's size on orbits shorter than 100 days exist around 30-50% of all Sun-like stars. In fact, the Solar System is particularly outstanding in its lack of "hot super-Earths" (or "mini-Neptunes"). These planets -- or their building blocks -- may have formed on wider orbits and migrated inward due to interactions with the gaseous protoplanetary disk. Here, we use a suite of dynamical simulations to show that gas giant planets act as barriers to the inward migration of super-Earths initially placed on more distant orbits. Jupiter's early formation may have prevented Uranus …
Super-Earths are the most abundant planets known to date and are characterized by having sizes between that of Earth and Neptune, typical orbital periods of less than 100 days and gaseous envelopes that are often massive enough to significantly contribute to the planet's overall radius. Furthermore, super-Earths regularly appear in tightly-packed multiple-planet systems, but resonant configurations in such systems are rare. This chapters summarizes current super-Earth formation theories. It starts from the formation of rocky cores and subsequent accretion of gaseous envelopes. We follow the th…
Planets with sizes between that of Earth (with radius R$_\oplus$) and Neptune (about 4 R$_\oplus$) are now known to be common around Sun-like stars. Most such planets have been discovered through the transit technique, by which the planet's size can be determined from the fraction of starlight blocked by the planet as it passes in front of its star. Measuring the planet's mass-and hence its density, which is a clue to its composition-is more difficult. Planets of size 2-4 R$_\oplus$ have proven to have a wide range of densities, implying a diversity of compositions, but these measurements did …
The formation of super-Earths, the most abundant planets in the Galaxy, remains elusive. These planets have masses that typically exceed that of the Earth by a factor of a few; appear to be predominantly rocky, although often surrounded by H/He atmospheres; and frequently occur in multiples. Moreover, planets that encircle the same star tend to have similar masses and radii, whereas those belonging to different systems exhibit remarkable overall diversity. Here, we advance a theoretical picture for rocky planet formation that satisfies the aforementioned constraints: building upon recent work …
The evidence is mounting that star formation necessarily involves planet formation. We clearly have a vested interest in finding other Earths but a true understanding of planet formation requires completing the census and mapping planetary architecture in all its grandeur and diversity. Here, we show that a 2000-star survey undertaken with SIM Lite will uniquely probe planets around B-A-F stars, bright and binary stars and white dwarfs. In addition, we show that the high precision of SIM Lite allows us to gain unique insights into planet formation via accurate measurements of mutual inclinatio…
Earth will become uninhabitable within 2-3 Gyr as a result of the moving boundaries of the habitable zone caused by the increasing luminosity of the Sun. Predictions about the future of habitable conditions on Earth include a decline in species diversity and habitat extent, ocean loss and changes in the magnitudes of geochemical cycles. However, testing these predictions on the present-day Earth is difficult. The discovery of a planet that is a near analogue to the far future Earth could provide a means to test these predictions. Such a planet would need to have an Earth-like biosphere history…
We present HST ultraviolet spectroscopy of the white dwarfs PG0843+516, PG1015+161, SDSS1228+1040, and GALEX1931+0117, which accrete circumstellar planetary debris formed from the destruction of asteroids. Combined with optical data, a minimum of five and a maximum of eleven different metals are detected in their photospheres. With metal sinking time scales of only a few days, these stars are in accretion/diffusion equilibrium, and the photospheric abundances closely reflect those of the circumstellar material. We find C/Si ratios that are consistent with that of the bulk Earth, corroborating …
It has been proposed that the observed systems of hot super-Earths formed in situ from high-mass disks. By fitting a disk profile to the entire population of Kepler planet candidates, Chiang & Laughlin (2013) constructed a "minimum-mass extrasolar nebula" with surface density profile Sigma r^-1.6. Here we use multiple-planet systems to show that it is inconsistent to assume a universal disk profile. Systems with 3-6 low-mass planets (or planet candidates) produce a diversity of minimum-mass disks with surface density profiles ranging from Sigma r^-3.2 to Sigma r^0.5 (5th-95th percentile). By s…
Numerical simulations of the stochastic end stage of planet formation typically begin with a population of embryos and planetesimals that grow into planets by merging. We analyzed the impact parameters of collisions leading to the growth of terrestrial planets from recent $N$-body simulations that assumed perfect merging and calculated more realistic outcomes using a new analytic collision physics model. We find that collision outcomes are diverse and span all possible regimes: hit-and-run, merging, partial accretion, partial erosion, and catastrophic disruption. The primary outcomes of giant …
We investigate formation mechanisms for icy super-Earth mass planets orbiting at 2-20 AU around 0.1-0.5 solar mass stars. A large ensemble of coagulation calculations demonstrates a new formation channel: disks composed of large planetesimals with radii of 30-300 km form super-Earths on time scales of roughly 1 Gyr. In other gas-poor disks, a collisional cascade grinds planetesimals to dust before the largest planets reach super-Earth masses. Once icy Earth-mass planets form, they migrate through the leftover swarm of planetesimals at rates of 0.01-1 AU per Myr. On time scales of 10 Myr to 1 G…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small planets between the sizes of Earth and Neptune substantially outnumber Jupiter-sized planets. The survey measurements support the core accretion model in which planets form by the accumulation of solids and then gas in protoplanetary disks. The diversity of exoplanetary characteristics demonstrates that most of the gross features of the Solar system are one…
In recent years we have been witnessing the discovery of one extrasolar gas giant after another. Now the time has come to detect more low-mass planets like Super-Earths and Earth-like objects. An interesting question to ask is: where should we look for them? We have explored here the possibility of finding Super-Earths in the close vicinity of gas giants, as a result of the early evolution of planetary systems. For this purpose, we have considered a young planetary system containing a Super-Earth and a gas giant, both embedded in a protoplanetary disc. We have shown that, if the Super-Earth is…
The riddle posed by super-Earths (1-4$R_\oplus$, 2-20$M_\oplus$) is that they are not Jupiters: their core masses are large enough to trigger runaway gas accretion, yet somehow super-Earths accreted atmospheres that weigh only a few percent of their total mass. We show that this puzzle is solved if super-Earths formed late, as the last vestiges of their parent gas disks were about to clear. This scenario would seem to present fine-tuning problems, but we show that there are none. Ambient gas densities can span many (up to 9) orders of magnitude, and super-Earths can still robustly emerge after…
Super-Earths, a class of planetary bodies with masses ranging from a few Earth-masses to slightly smaller than Uranus, have recently found a special place in the exoplanetary science. Being slightly larger than a typical terrestrial planet, super-Earths may have physical and dynamical characteristics similar to those of Earth whereas unlike terrestrial planets, they are relatively easier to detect. Because of their sizes, super-Earths can maintain moderate atmospheres and possibly dynamic interiors with plate tectonics. They also seem to be more common around low-mass stars where the habitable…
The detection and atmospheric characterization of super-Earths is one of the major frontiers of exoplanetary science. Currently, extensive efforts are underway to detect molecules, particularly H2O, in super-Earth atmospheres. In the present work, we develop a systematic set of strategies to identify and observe potentially H2O-rich super-Earths that provide the best prospects for characterizing their atmospheres using existing instruments. Firstly, we provide analytic prescriptions and discuss factors that need to be taken into account while planning and interpreting observations of super-Ear…
The tectonic regime of rocky planets fundamentally influences their long-term evolution and cycling of volatiles between interior and atmosphere. Earth is the only known planet with active plate tectonics, but observations of exoplanets may deliver insights into the diversity of tectonic regimes beyond the solar system. Observations of the thermal phase curve of super-Earth LHS 3844b reveal a solid surface and lack of a substantial atmosphere, with a temperature contrast between the substellar and antistellar point of around 1000 K. Here, we use these constraints on the planet's surface to con…
Super-Earths possess low-mass H$_2$/He atmospheres (typically less than 10% by mass). However, the origins of super-Earth atmospheres have not yet been ascertained. We investigate the role of rapid disk clearing by photoevaporation during the formation of super-Earths and their atmospheres. We perform unified simulations of super-Earth formation and atmospheric evolution in evolving disks that consider both photoevaporative winds and magnetically driven disk winds. For the growth mode of planetary cores, we consider two cases in which planetary embryos grow with and without pebble accretion. O…
Not Earth-like Yet Temperate? More Generic Climate Feedback Configurations Still Allow Temperate Climates in Habitable Zone Exo-Earth Candidates
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona（月球与行星实验室，亚利桑那大学）；Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona（斯图尔德天文台，亚利桑那大学）；James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences, The University of Arizona（詹姆斯·C·怀扬特光学科学学院，亚利桑那大学）
Close-in super-Earths, with radii R = 2-5 R_Earth and orbital periods P < 100 days, orbit more than half, and perhaps nearly all Sun-like stars in the universe. We use this omnipresent population to construct the minimum-mass extrasolar nebula (MMEN), the circumstellar disk of solar-composition solids and gas from which such planets formed, if they formed near their current locations and did not migrate. In a series of back-of-the-envelope calculations, we demonstrate how in-situ formation in the MMEN is fast, efficient, and can reproduce many of the observed properties of close-in super-Earth…
The core-accretion model predicts that planetary cores as massive as super-Earths undergo runaway gas accretion to become gas giants. However, the exoplanet census revealed the prevalence of super-Earths close to their host stars, which should have avoided runaway gas accretion. In fact, mass-radius relationships of transiting planets suggest that some close-in super-Earths possess H$_2$/He atmospheres of ~ 0.1-10% by mass. Previous studies indicated that properties of a disk gas such as metallicity and the inflow/outflow cycle of a disk gas around a super-Earth can regulate accumulation of a …
We report the discovery of planets orbiting two bright, nearby early K dwarf stars, HD 97658 and Gl 785. These planets were detected by Keplerian modelling of radial velocities measured with Keck-HIRES for the NASA-UC Eta-Earth Survey. HD 97658 b is a close-in super-Earth with minimum mass Msini = 8.2 +/- 1.2 M_Earth, orbital period P = 9.494 +/- 0.005 d, and an orbit that is consistent with circular. Gl 785 b is a Neptune-mass planet with Msini = 21.6 +/- 2.0 M_Earth, P = 74.39 +/- 0.12 d, and orbital eccentricity 0.30 +/- 0.09. Photometric observations with the T12 0.8 m automatic photometri…
Observational advancements are leading to increasingly precise measurements of super-Earth masses and radii. Such measurements are used in internal structure models to constrain interior compositions of super-Earths. It is now critically important to quantify the effect of various model assumptions on the predicted radii. In particular, models often neglect thermal effects, a choice justified by noting that the thermal expansion of a solid Earth-like planet is small. However, the thermal effects for water-rich interiors may be significant. We have systematically explored the extent to which th…
Understanding the occurrence of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars is essential to the search for Earth analogues. Yet a lack of reliable Kepler detections for such planets has forced many estimates to be derived from the close-in ($2<P_{\mathrm{orb}}<100$ days) population, whose radii may have evolved differently under the effect of atmospheric mass loss mechanisms. In this work, we compute the intrinsic occurrence rates of close-in super-Earths ($\sim1-2\,R_\oplus$) and sub-Neptunes ($\sim2-3.5\,R_\oplus$) for FGK stars ($0.56-1.63\,M_\odot$) as a function of orbital…
Super-Earths, objects slightly larger than Earth and slightly smaller than Uranus, have found a special place in exoplanetary science. As a new class of planetary bodies, these objects have challenged models of planet formation at both ends of the spectrum and have triggered a great deal of research on the composition and interior dynamics of rocky planets in connection to their masses and radii. Being relatively easier to detect than an Earth-sized planet at 1 AU around a G star, super-Earths have become the focus of worldwide observational campaigns to search for habitable planets. With a ra…
A fundamental question in cometary science is whether the different dynamical classes of comets have different chemical compositions, which would reflect different initial conditions. From the ground or Earth orbit, radio and infrared spectroscopic observations of a now significant sample of comets indeed reveal deep differences in the relative abundances of cometary ices. However, no obvious correlation with dynamical classes is found. Further results come, or are expected, from space exploration. Such investigations, by nature limited to a small number of objects, are unfortunately focussed …
Kepler's observation shows that many of the detected planets are super-Earths. They are inside a range of critical masses overlapping the core masses (2-20 $M_{\bigoplus}$), which would trigger the runaway accretion and develop the gas giants. Thus, super-Earths/sub-Neptunes can be formed by restraining runaway growth of gaseous envelopes. We assess the effect of planetary rotation in delaying the mass growth. The centrifugal force, induced by spin, will offset a part of the gravitational force and deform the planet. Tracking the change in structure, we find that the temperature at the radiati…
The Kepler observations indicate that many exoplanets are super-Earths, which brings about a puzzle for the core-accretion scenario. Since observed super-Earths are in the range of critical mass, they would accrete gas efficiently and become gas giants. Theoretically, super-Earths are predicted to be rare in the core-accretion framework. To resolve this contradiction, we propose that the tidally-forced turbulent diffusion may affect the heat transport inside the planet. Thermal feedback induced by turbulent diffusion is investigated. We find that the tidally-forced turbulence would generate ps…
