In a magnetized plasma, naturally occurring pressure anisotropies facilitate in- stabilities that are expected to modify the transport properties of the system. In this thesis we examine two such instabilities and, where ...

The increasing number of discovered extra-solar planets opens a new opportunity for studies of the formation of planetary systems. Their diversity keeps challenging the long-standing theories which were based on data ...

This thesis finds that vortex instabilities are not necessarily a barrier to their potential as sites for planetesimal formation. It is challenging to build planetesimals from dust within the lifetime of a protoplanetary disc ...