Contributions > By speaker > Haghighipour Nader

We present results of our expansive study on identifying the signatures of long-period giant planets in the physical characteristics and composition of terrestrial planets, and their habitability. We simulated terrestrial planet formation in a large number of systems where we considered different number of giant planets, varied their masses and orbital parameters, and considered planet migration. We also ran simulations for different compositions of the protoplanetary disk, and in systems without giant planets. Results pointed to three signature-effects that serve as the imprints of giant planets on the composition and habitability of rocky bodies: In all systems where the perturbation of giant planets extended to the regions of terrestrial planets, 1) the final planets were smaller in number and size, 2) had less diverse composition, and 3) carried less water than those formed in systems with no giant planet. Our study shows how the above signature-effects manifest themselves in the geophysical properties of the final planets, and how they affect the composition of their atmosphere. We present details of our study and discuss the implications of its results.