Related papers: Our astrochemical heritage
In this chapter we review the astrophysical origins of Earth's carbon, starting from the products of the Big Bang and culminating with the Earth's formation. We review the measured compositions of different primitive objects including…
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…
This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy - the discovery some fifteen years ago of the first planets around other stars (exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own…
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…
The solar system has changed dramatically since its birth, and so did our understanding of it. A considerable research effort has been invested in the past decade in an attempt to reconstruct the solar system history, including the earliest…
Meteorites are a remarkable resource. They capture the imagination of people worldwide with their spectacular entry through Earth's atmosphere as fireballs, and their exotic character of being pieces of other worlds. Scientifically, they…
Comets hold answers to mysteries of the Solar System by recording presolar history, the initial states of planet formation and prebiotic organics and volatiles to the early Earth. Analysis of returned samples from a comet nucleus will…
To understand the chemical origin of the Solar system, the chemical evolution along the star/planet formation is a key issue. Extensive observational studies have demonstrated a chemical diversity in young low-mass protostellar sources so…
Observations of comets and asteroids show that the Solar Nebula that spawned our planetary system was rich in water and organic molecules. Bombardment brought these organics to the young Earth's surface, seeding its early chemistry. Unlike…
Our modern day Solar System has $4.6\times10^9$ yrs of evolution behind it with just a few relics of its birth conditions remaining. Comets are thought to be some of the most pristine tracers of the initial ingredients that were combined to…
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…
Stars grow by accreting gas that has an evolving composition owing to the growth and inward drift of dust (pebble wave), the formation of planetesimals and planets, and the selective removal of hydrogen and helium by disk winds. We…
As stellar compositions evolve over time in the Milky Way, so will the resulting planet populations. In order to place planet formation in the context of Galactic chemical evolution, we make use of a large ($N = 5\,325$) stellar sample…
Planets form in disks of gas and dust around young stars. The disk molecular reservoirs and their chemical evolution affect all aspects of planet formation, from the coagulation of dust grains into pebbles, to the elemental and molecular…
Protoplanetary disks (PPDs) surrounding young stars are short-lived (~0.3-10 Myr), compact (~10-1000 AU) rotating reservoirs of gas and dust. PPDs are believed to be birthplaces of planetary systems, where tiny grains are assembled into…
We have developed a detailed standard chemical evolution model to study the evolution of all the chemical elements up to the iron peak in the solar vicinity. We consider that the Galaxy was formed through two episodes of exponentially…
Geochemical and astronomical evidence demonstrate that planet formation occurred in two spatially and temporally separated reservoirs. The origin of this dichotomy is unknown. We use numerical models to investigate how the evolution of the…
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…
Isotope analyses on meteorites, planets, lunar samples, the solar wind, and solar flares show that heterogeneous debris of a supernova (SN) that exploded here 5 Gy ago formed the solar system. The Sun formed on the collapsed SN core. Iron…
Star and planet formation are inextricably linked. In the earliest phases of the collapse of a protostar a disc forms around the young star and such discs are observed for the first several million years of a star's life. It is within these…