The growth of outer gas giants naturally destabilizes the orbits of nearby
planetesimals. These are scattered in all directions -- many are ejected, but some are scattered inward toward the growing rocky planets (if they exist). In the Solar System, both the C-type asteroids and water delivery to Earth can be explained as a simple byproduct of Jupiter and Saturn's growth. I will explain the...
In the coming decades, the search for life beyond the Solar system will begin in earnest. But how should we choose the best targets for that search? In order to maximiseour chances of success, it is important to consider the many and various factors that could render one planet more or less habitable than another. In this talk, I will describe how dynamical simulations can reveal the role that...
Whether or how giant planets affect the formation and orbital assembly of terrestrial planets has been a longstanding question in planetary astrophysics. In our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn have played a fundamental role in defining the extent and architecture of the asteroid belt, and have been crucial to promoting terrestrial planet formation by confining the process to interior to 1.9...
Jupiter, the archetype of cold giant planets, played a key role in controlling the transport of volatile materials like water and organics between the inner and outer Solar System since its birth. While an extensive body of work highlights how its formation and migration dynamically excites the surrounding planetesimal disk, very few studies investigate the global collisional implications of...
ALMA’s observations of circumstellar discs highlight the wide variety of properties and morphologies of their gas and dust. In particular, the widespread presence of rings and gaps in the dust component of discs is generally considered the direct signature of massive planets forming therein. These gaps and rings often appear at tens of au from the host star, raising the question of whether...
Transiting extrasolar comets have been detected for four decades. Their gaseous components are revealed through spectroscopy, while their dusty tails produce characteristic photometric signatures - remarkably consistent with predictions made 25 years ago. Recently, automated searches for exocometary transits in Kepler and TESS datasets have led to the identification of several dozen new...
