Dry Out Super-Earths via Giant Impacts
A dry planet and one with a thick atmosphere close together seems to be very weird. How about smashing one with a huge impactor?
Triggered fragmentation in self-gravitating disks
How to form clumps in the intermediate ranges of massive protoplanetary disks? Could these later be planets?
Giant planets from far out there
Planets are ubiquitous in the Milky Way. Therefore, building them must be straightforward, right? Not at all!
Nature’s Starships Vol. II – A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Bloody Cold Beginnings
How and where did the first organic molecules emerge? Sophisticated chemistry models for the synthesis of amino acids within planetesimals can help us to decipher these mysteries.
Nature’s Starships Vol. I – Ride in on Shooting Stars
Amino acids were possibly brought to Earth by meteorite impacts, which contaminated the young environment with organic compounds. However, where and how did these most basic ingredients of life form in the first place?