Related papers: A perspective from extinct radionuclides on a Youn…
Based on early solar system abundances of short-lived radionuclides (SRs), such as $^{26}$Al (T$_{1/2} = 0.74$ Myr) and $^{60}$Fe (T$_{1/2} = 1.5$ Myr), it is often asserted that the Sun was born in a large stellar cluster, where a massive…
Meteorites trace planet formation in the Sun's protoplanetary disk, but they also record the influence of the Sun's birth environment. Whether the Sun formed in a region like Taurus-Auriga with ~10^2 stars, or a region like the Carina…
The relative abundances of the radionuclides in the solar system at the time of its birth are crucial arbiters for competing hypotheses regarding the birth environment of the Sun. The presence of short-lived radionuclides, as evidenced by…
Understanding the origin of comets requires knowledge of how the Solar System formed from a cloud of dust and gas 4.567 Gyr ago. Here, a review is presented of how the remnants of this formation process, meteorites and to a lesser extent…
The detection of exoplanets and accretion disks around newborn stars has spawned new ideas and models of how our Solar System formed and evolved. Meteorites as probes of geologic deep time can provide ground truth to these models. In…
Our Sun, like all stars, formed within a cold molecular cloud. Astronomical observations and theory provide considerable detail into this process. Yet cosmochemical observations of short lived radionuclides in primitive meteorites, in…
Little is known about the stellar environment and the genealogy of our solar system. Short-lived radionuclides (SLRs, mean lifetime shorter than 100 Myr) that were present in the solar protoplanetary disk 4.56 Gyr ago could potentially…
Meteorites, and in particular primitive meteorites (chondrites), are irreplaceable probes of the solar protoplanetary disk. We review their essential properties and endeavour to place them in astrophysical context. The earliest solar system…
In addition to long-lived radioactive nuclei like U and Th isotopes, which have been used to measure the age of the Galaxy, also radioactive nuclei with half-lives between 0.1 and 100 million years (short-lived radionuclides, SLRs) were…
Our Sun and planetary system were born about 4.5 billion years ago. How did this happen and what is our heritage from these early times? This review tries to address these questions from an astrochemical point of view. On the one hand, we…
The solar nebula contained a number of short-lived radionuclides (SLRs) with half-lives of tens of Myr or less, comparable to the timescales for formation of protostars and protoplanetary disks. Therefore, determining the origins of SLRs…
Radioisotopic ages for meteorites and their components provide constraints on the evolution of small bodies: timescales of accretion, thermal and aqueous metamorphism, differentiation, cooling and impact metamorphism. Realising that the…
The solar system started to form about 4.56 Gyr ago and despite the long intervening time span, there still exist several clues about its formation. The three major sources for this information are meteorites, the present solar system…
Chondritic meteorites constitute the most ancient rock record available in the laboratory to study the formation of the solar system and its planets. Detailed investigations of their mineralogy, petrography, chemistry and isotopic…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
An attempt is made, probably for the first time, to understand the origin of the solar system in context with the evolution of the galaxy as a natural consequence of the birth of several generations of stellar clusters. The galaxy is…
Radioactive nuclei are the key to understanding the circumstances of the birth of our Sun because meteoritic analysis has proven that many of them were present at that time. Their origin, however, has been so far elusive. The ERC-CoG-2016…
Meteorite studies have revealed the presence of short-lived radioactivities in the early solar system. The current data suggests that the origin of at least some of the radioactivities requires contribution from recent nucleosynthesis at a…
Understanding the origin and long-term evolution of the Solar System is a fundamental goal of planetary science and astrophysics. This chapter describes our current understanding of the key processes that shaped our planetary system,…
Young stellar objects are observed to have large X-ray fluxes and are thought to produce commensurate luminosities in energetic particles (cosmic rays). This particle radiation, in turn, can synthesize short-lived radioactive nuclei through…