October 2024: Exploring the catastrophic regime: thermodynamics and
disintegration in head-on planetary collisions – Dou et al. (2024b)
In this paper, published in
MNRAS, we
investigate the thermodynamics of high-energy, head-on giant impacts. We
describe a new regime of 'fragmentary disintegration' for high-energy
collisions, and explore the origins of this phenomenon.
March 2024: Formation of super-Mercuries via giant impacts – Dou et al. (2024a)
In this paper, published in
MNRAS, we
modelled mantle-stripping in giant impacts between rocky planets. We derived
new scaling relations that predict the mass and core mass resulting from
impacts and discuss the collisions needed to form Mercury-like planets with
high iron core masses.
August 2023: A super-massive Neptune-sized planet – Naponiello et al. (2023)
In this paper by Naponiello et al., published in
Nature, we
present the discovery of the ultra-dense Neptune-sized planet TOI-1853b.
With a mass of 73 Earth masses and a density of 9.7 grams per cubic
centimetre, TOI-1853b presents a challenge for conventional theories planet
formation. Our simulations show that the initial planetary body would likely
have needed to be water-rich and suffer an extreme giant impact at a speed
of greater than 75 km/s in order to produce TOI-1853b as it is observed.
See also coverage from:
Space.com,
Phys.org.
April 2022: Did Earth eat its leftovers? – Carter & Stewart (2022)
In this paper, published in The Planetary Science Journal, we
investigate the provenances of planetesimals 'leftover' in the inner disk in the late stages of accretion simulations.
An executable version of the paper is available on GitHub.
April 2022: Denman et al. (2022) – Atmosphere loss in oblique Super-Earth collisions
In this work by Denman et al. we modelled
the loss of atmosphere in oblique collisions between super-Earth
sized planets. We show that oblique collisions are less efficient
at atmosphere removal than head-on collisions. We found that a single
collision cannot remove all the atmosphere
without also removing a significant fraction of the mantle.
Read the paper in MNRAS.
January 2022: Congratulations Dr Denman!
Dr Thomas Denman passed his viva in November and has now been awarded his PhD!
You can read about Dr Denman's work on collisions of Super-Earths at
Explore Bristol Research.