Topography of exoplanet
The discovery of exoplanets outside our Solar System has profoundly changed our view of our place in the universe. Thanks to technological developments, it is now possible to obtain spectroscopic information about these distant worlds. One of the major questions concerns the habitability of these exoplanets, and geologists must take part in this debate.
On the basis of our statistical analyses of the various planetary bodies in the Solar System, it would appear that the multifractal model can be used to describe the roughness of these bodies, in all their diversity.
My team has naturally proposed a method for generating realistic synthetic topographies for solid exoplanetary bodies, which can also be used for terrestrial palaeo-topographies.The next generation of telescopes should be able to see the indirect effects of the topography of exoplanets.
To fly over an exoplanet in 3D
Reference : Landais, F.; Schmidt, F. & Lovejoy, S. Universal multifractal Martian topography Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, Copernicus, 2015, 22, 713-722, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/npg-22-713-2015 Landais, F.; Schmidt, F. & Lovejoy, S. Multifractal topography of several planetary bodies in the Solar System Icarus, Elsevier BV, 2019, 319, 14-20, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2018.07.005 Landais, F.; Schmidt, F. & Lovejoy, S. Topography of (exo)planets Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Oxford University Press (OUP), 2019, 484, 787-793, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty3253
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