Related papers: New Indivisible Geoscience Paradigm
Inside carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are tiny dust particles which, when heated, release noble gases with an isotopic composition different from what is found anywhere else in the solar system. For this reason it is believed that these…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
In protoplanetary disks, sufficiently massive planets excite pressure bumps, which can then be preferred locations for forming new planet cores. We discuss how this loop may affect the architecture of multi-planet systems, and compare our…
The models that most successfully reproduce the orbital architecture of the Solar System terrestrial planets start from a narrow annulus of material that grows into embryos and then planets. However, it is not clear how this ring model can…
Chondritic meteorites, the building blocks of terrestrial planets, are made of an out-of-equilibrium assemblage of solids formed at high and low temperatures, either in our Solar system or previous generations of stars. This was considered…
A persistent question in exoplanet demographics is whether exoplanetary systems form from similar compositional building blocks to our own. Polluted white dwarf stars offer a unique way to address this question as they provide measurements…
In the core accretion paradigm of planet formation, gas giants only form a massive atmosphere after their progenitors exceeded a threshold mass: the critical core mass. Most (exo)planets, being smaller and rock/ice-dominated, never crossed…
The formation of gas giant planets is assumed to be preceded by the emergence of solid cores in the conventional sequential-accretion paradigm. This hypothesis implies that the presence of earth-like planets can be inferred from the…
We review the state of knowledge on the origin of Earth's water. Empirical constraints come from chemical and isotopic measurements of solar system bodies and of Earth itself. Dynamical models have revealed pathways for water delivery to…
The standard picture of planet formation posits that giant gas planets are over-grown rocky planets massive enough to attract enormous gas atmospheres. It has been shown recently that the opposite point of view is physically plausible: the…
In this review we discuss all the relevant solar/stellar radiation and plasma parameters and processes that act together in the formation and modification of atmospheres and exospheres that consist of surface-related minerals. Magma ocean…
Earth's geodynamo has operated for over 3.5 billion years. The magnetic field is currently powered by thermocompositional convection in the outer core, which involves the release of light elements and latent heat as the inner core…
Meteorites contain minerals from Solar System asteroids with different properties (like size, presence of water, core formation). We provide new mid-IR transmission spectra of powdered meteorites to obtain templates of how mid-IR spectra of…
Deep elemental composition is a challenging measurement to achieve in the giant planets of the solar system. Yet, knowledge of the deep composition offers important insights in the internal structure of these planets, their evolutionary…
The timeline of the Earth's history reveals quasi-periodicity of the geological record over the last 542 Myr, on timescales close, in the order of magnitude, to 1 Myr. What is the origin of this quasi-periodicity? What is the nature of the…
In the hot-start core accretion formation model for gas giants, the interior of a planet is usually assumed to be fully convective. By calculating the detailed internal evolution of a planet assuming hot start outer boundary conditions, we…
Astronomical observations reveal that protoplanetary disks around young stars commonly have ring- and gap-like structures in their dust distributions. These features are associated with pressure bumps trapping dust particles at specific…
The interiors of many planets consist mostly of fluid layers. When these layers are subject to superadiabatic temperature or compositional gradients, turbulent convection transports heat and momentum. In addition, planets are fast rotators.…
Chondrites are rocky fragments of asteroids that formed at different times and heliocentric distances in the early solar system. Most chondrite groups contain water-bearing minerals, attesting that both water-ice and dust were accreted on…
Astronomical surveys have identified numerous exoplanets with bulk compositions that are unlike the planets of the Solar System, including rocky super-Earths and gas-enveloped sub-Neptunes. Observing the atmospheres of these objects…