A new paper recently published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific explores whether tightly packed planetary systems can host habitable worlds over billions of years. The paper, Dynamical Interactions and Habitability in …
Publications
When Giant Planets Move In: Why Warm Jupiters Can Keep Their Inner Neighbors (and Hot Jupiters Usually Can’t)
My new paper, published in ApJ this month, tackles a question I always assumed the answer was “no” to in exoplanet dynamics: if a giant planet becomes a close-in hot/warm Jupiter via high-eccentricity tidal migration, …
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 …
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 …
New paper: Tides Tighten the Hycean Habitable Zone
Hycean planets (ocean worlds with H-rich atmospheres) are thought to be promising spots for life, particularly around M-dwarfs, with the habitable zone being much wider than it is for terrestrial planets. But there’s a twist… …