Dr Philip J Carter
University of Bristol
News
January 2022: Gadget2-planetary
The planetary version of the SPH code Gadget2 is now available on GitHub!
August 2020: Colliding in the shadows of giants – Carter & Stewart (2020)
In this paper, available on arXiv
and published in The Planetary Science Journal, we
investigate planetesimal–planetesimal collisions during the growth
and migration of giant planets. Gas giant migration induces large
numbers of high velocity collisions between planetesimals, many of
which can cause shock-vaporization of planetesimal materials.
June 2020: Denman et al. (2020) – Atmosphere loss in planet–planet collisions
Thomas Denman, a grad student at the University of Bristol I co-advise,
had his first first-author paper published! In this work we modeled
the loss of atmosphere in collisions between mini-Neptune and super-Earth
sized planets. 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 or
download from arXiv.
February 2020: JGR Planets cover
Our paper was chosen for the cover of the latest issue of JGR Planets!
January 2020: Are exoplanetesimals differentiated? – Bonsor et al. (2020)
Short answer: yes. In this paper by Bonsor et al., available on arXiv
and published in MNRAS, we compare calcium and iron abundances from a
large sample of polluted white dwarfs with expected distributions from
collisionally processed, differentiated planetesimals. We find that the
data are best explained by 66–100% of white dwarfs having accreted the remains
of differentiated bodies.
December 2019: The energy budgets of giant impacts – Carter et al. (2020)
In this paper, available on arXiv
and soon to be published in JGR Planets, we explore the exchange of energy
during giant impacts, the vaporization of the impactors' mantles, and the state of the
resulting body immediately after the impact.
April 2019: UC Davis Postdoctoral Research Symposium
I discussed giant impacts and moon formation at the UC Davis
Postdoctoral Research Symposium.
December 2017: Collisional stripping of planetary crusts – Carter et al. (2018)
In this paper, published in EPSL,
we explore the effects of collisions on the outer crust of planetesimals and planetary embryos. We find that crust
is preferentially lost during collisions, and show that this can lead to changes in bulk composition of lithophile
elements if reaccretion is inefficient.
September 2017: Magnesium isotope evidence that accretional vapour loss shapes planetary compositions
In this paper by Hin et al., published in Nature,
new measurements are presented that show Earth and other large planetary bodies have isotpically heavier
magnesium compositions than primitive meteorites. We examine vapour loss from planetesimals as a
consequence of collisions during accretion. Loss of significant mass of vapour from
growing planetary embryos could explain the Earth's isotopically heavy Magnesium signature.
See also coverage from:
The Washington Post,
Space.com,
The Independent.
October 2015: Compositional evolution during rocky protoplanet accretion
In this paper, published in ApJ,
we explore the effects of collisional evolution on the compositions of planetesimals and embryos during the
intermediate stages of planet formation. ADS link.
