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It has long been thought that the presence of a giant planet is a pre-requisite for the development of life on potentially habitable planets. Without Jupiter, it was argued, the Earth would have been subject to a punishing impact regime, which would have significantly retarded or outright prevented the development of life on our planet. Although this idea is widely embraced, little research has previously been carried out to support it. Here, we present the results of several suites of dynamical integrations used to model the influence of Jupiter's mass and orbit on the impact rate that would be experienced by the Earth. We find that, far from being a simple shield, Jupiter's role in determining the terrestrial impact flux is significantly more complicated than previously thought. Far from being a simple friend, such giant planets are perhaps more likely to imperil the development of life on otherwise habitable planets., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

For many years, it was assumed that Jupiter prevented the Earth from being subject to a punishing impact regime that would greatly hinder the development of life. Here, we present the 4th in a series of studies investigating this hypothesis. Previously, we examined the effect of Jupiter's mass on the impact rate experienced by Earth. Here, we extend that approach to consider the influence of Jupiter's orbital eccentricity and inclination on the impact rate. We first consider scenarios in which Jupiter's orbital eccentricity was somewhat higher and somewhat lower than that in our Solar System. We find that Jupiter's orbital eccentricity plays a moderate role in determining the impact flux at Earth, with more eccentric orbits resulting in a higher impact rate of asteroids than for more circular orbits. This is particularly pronounced at high "Jupiter" masses. For short-period comets, the same effect is clearly apparent, albeit to a lesser degree. The flux of short-period comets impacting the Earth is slightly higher for more eccentric Jovian orbits. We also consider scenarios in which Jupiter's orbital inclination was greater than that in our Solar System. Increasing Jupiter's orbital inclination greatly increased the flux of asteroidal impactors. However, at the highest tested inclination, the disruption to the Asteroid belt was so great that the belt would be entirely depleted after an astronomically short period of time. In such a system, the impact flux from asteroid bodies would therefore be very low, after an initial period of intense bombardment. By contrast, the influence of Jovian inclination on impacts from short-period comets was very small. A slight reduction in the impact flux was noted for the moderate and high inclination scenarios considered in this work - the results for inclinations of five and twenty-five degrees were essentially identical., Comment: 5 figures, plus 12 as an appendix

Within the next few years, the first Earth-mass planets will be discovered around other stars. Some of those worlds will certainly lie within the classical "habitable zone" of their parent stars, and we will quickly move from knowing of no exoEarths to knowing many. For the first time, we will be in a position to carry out a detailed search for the first evidence of life beyond our Solar System. However, such observations will be hugely taxing and time consuming to perform, and it is almost certain that far more potentially habitable worlds will be known than it is possible to study. It is therefore important to catalogue and consider the various effects which make a promising planet more or less suitable for the development of life. In this work, we review the various planetary, dynamical and stellar influences that could influence the habitability of exoEarths. The various influences must be taken in concert when we attempt to decide where to focus our first detailed search for life. While there is no guarantee that any given planet will be inhabited, it is vitally important to ensure that we focus our time and effort on those planets most likely to yield a positive result., Comment: 32 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; Accepted to appear in the International Journal of Astrobiology

In this work, we investigate the dynamical stability of pre-formed Neptune Trojans under the gravitational influence of the four giant planets in compact planetary architectures, over 10 Myr. In our modelling, the initial orbital locations of Uranus and Neptune (aN) were varied to produce systems in which those planets moved on non-resonant orbits, or in which they lay in their mutual 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4 mean-motion resonances (MMRs). In total, 420 simulations were carried out, examining 42 different architectures, with a total of 840000 particles across all runs. In the non-resonant cases, the Trojans suffered only moderate levels of dynamical erosion, with the most compact systems (those with aN less than or equal 18 AU) losing around 50% of their Trojans by the end of the integrations. In the 2:3 and 3:4 MMR scenarios, however, dynamical erosion was much higher with depletion rates typically greater than 66% and total depletion in the most compact systems. The 1:2 resonant scenarios featured disruption on levels intermediate between the non-resonant cases and other resonant scenarios, with depletion rates of the order of tens of percent. Overall, the great majority of plausible pre-migration planetary architectures resulted in severe levels of depletion of the Neptunian Trojan clouds. In particular, if Uranus and Neptune formed near their mutual 2:3 or 3:4 MMR and at heliocentric distances within 18 AU (as favoured by recent studies), we found that the great majority of pre-formed Trojans would have been lost prior to Neptune's migration. This strengthens the case for the great bulk of the current Neptunian Trojan population having been captured during that migration., Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, MNRAS (in press). Abstract slightly reduced in size, but in original form in the PDF file

It has long been assumed that the planet Jupiter acts as a giant shield, significantly lowering the impact rate of small bodies on the Earth. However, until recently, very little work had been carried out examining the role played by Jupiter in determining the frequency of such collisions. In this work, the third of a series of papers, we examine the degree to which the impact rate on Earth resulting from the Oort cloud comets is enhanced or lessened by the presence of a giant planet in a Jupiter-like orbit, in an attempt to more fully understand the impact regime under which life on Earth has developed. Our results show that the presence of a giant planet in a Jupiter-like orbit significantly alters the impact rate of Oort cloud comets on the Earth, decreasing the rate as the mass of the giant increases. The greatest bombardment flus is observed when no giant planet is present., Comment: 21 pages, 4 Figures. Accepted for publication in the International Journal of Astrobiology

We present the results of detailed dynamical simulations of the effect of the migration of the four giant planets on both the transport of pre-formed Neptune Trojans, and the capture of new Trojans from a trans-Neptunian disk. We find that scenarios involving the slow migration of Neptune over a large distance (50Myr to migrate from 18.1AU to its current location) provide the best match to the properties of the known Trojans. Scenarios with faster migration (5Myr), and those in which Neptune migrates from 23.1AU to its current location, fail to adequately reproduce the current day Trojan population. Scenarios which avoid disruptive perturbation events between Uranus and Neptune fail to yield any significant excitation of pre-formed Trojans (transported with efficiencies between 30 and 98% whilst maintaining the dynamically cold nature of these objects). Conversely, scenarios with periods of strong Uranus-Neptune perturbation lead to the almost complete loss of such pre-formed objects. In these cases, a small fraction (~0.15%) of these escaped objects are later recaptured as Trojans prior to the end of migration, with a wide range of eccentricities (<0.35) and inclinations (<40 deg). In all scenarios (including those with such disruptive interaction between Uranus and Neptune) the capture of objects from the trans-Neptunian disk (through which Neptune migrates) is achieved with efficiencies between ~0.1 and ~1%. The captured Trojans display a wide range of inclinations (<40 deg for slow migration, and <20 deg for rapid migration) and eccentricities (<0.35), and we conclude that, given the vast amount of material which undoubtedly formed beyond the orbit of Neptune, such captured objects may be sufficient to explain the entire Neptune Trojan population. (Shortened version), Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures

The asteroids are the major source of potential impactors on the Earth today. It has long been assumed that the giant planet Jupiter acts as a shield, significantly lowering the impact rate on the Earth from both cometary and asteroidal bodies. Such shielding, it is claimed, enabled the development and evolution of life in a collisional environment which is not overly hostile. The reduced frequency of impacts, and of related mass extinctions, would have allowed life the time to thrive, where it would otherwise have been suppressed. However, in the past, little work has been carried out to examine the validity of this idea. In the first of several papers, we examine the degree to which the impact risk resulting from a population representative of the asteroids is enhanced or lessened by the presence of a giant planet, in an attempt to fully understand the impact regime under which life on Earth has developed. Our results show that the situation is far less clear cut that has previously been assumed - for example, the presence of a giant planet can act to enhance the impact rate of asteroids on the Earth significantly., Comment: 34 pages, 15 Figures

We have shown that Earth-mass planets could survive in variously restricted regions of the habitable zones (HZs) of most of a sample of nine of the 102 main-sequence exoplanetary systems confirmed by 19 November 2003. In a preliminary extrapolation of our results to the other systems, we estimate that roughly a half of these systems could have had an Earth-mass planet confined to the HZ for at least the most recent 1000 Ma. The HZ migrates outwards during the main-sequence lifetime, and so this proportion varies with stellar age. About two thirds of the systems could have such a planet confined to the HZ for at least 1000 Ma at sometime during the main-sequence lifetime. Clearly, these systems should be high on the target list for exploration for terrestrial planets. We have reached this conclusion by launching putative Earth-mass planets in various orbits and following their fate with mixed-variable symplectic and hybrid integrators. Whether the Earth-mass planets could form in the HZs of the exoplanetary systems is an urgent question that needs further study., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures

We have shown that Earth-mass planets could survive in variously restricted regions of the habitable zones (HZs) of most of a sample of nine of the 102 main-sequence exoplanetary systems confirmed by 25 September 2003. In a preliminary extrapolation of our results to the other systems, we estimate that roughly a half of these systems could have had an Earth-mass planet confined to the HZ for at least the most recent 1000 Ma. The HZ migrates outwards during the main-sequence lifetime, and so this proportion varies with stellar age; about two thirds of the systems could have such a planet confined to the HZ for at least 1000 Ma at sometime during the main-sequence lifetime. Clearly, these systems should be high on the target list for exploration for terrestrial planets. We have reached this conclusion by launching putative Earth-mass planets in various orbits and following their fate with mixed-variable symplectic and hybrid integrators. Whether the Earth-mass planets could form in the HZs of the exoplanetary systems is an urgent question that needs further study., Comment: 7 Pages, XIXth IAP Colloquium, Paris

SuperWASP is a fully robotic, ultra-wide angle survey for planetary transits. Currently under construction, it will consist of 5 cameras, each monitoring a 9.5 x 9.5 deg field of view. The Torus mount and enclosure will be fully automated and linked to a built-in weather station. We aim to begin observations at the beginning of 2003., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to be published in proceedings of "Scientific Frontiers in Research on Extrasolar Planets"