University of Wisconsin–Madison

Month: October 2025

New paper: Investigating the Formation of Planets Interior to in situ Hot Jupiters

In a his new first-author paper (now on arXiv), UW–Madison undergraduate alumni Devansh Mathur investigates what happens to small planetary embryos interior to a forming hot Jupiter. Using hundreds of N-body simulations, he showed that if enough solid material is pushed inward during short-range migration, both the giant planet and smaller interior companion planets could …

New paper: How Einstein’s Theory Might Help Planets Around White Dwarfs Stay Habitable

A new paper led by UW-Madison undergraduate Eva Stafne and published in ApJ this week (arXiv preprint here) explores how general relativity (the same physics that explains Mercury’s orbit) could help preserve life-friendly conditions on planets orbiting white dwarfs. White dwarfs are the dense stellar remnants of Sun-like stars. Their habitable zones lie extremely close, …