Related papers: A Collisional Origin to Earth's Non-chondritic Com…

We outline a scenario which traces a direct path from freely-floating nebula particles to the first 10-100km-sized bodies in the terrestrial planet region, producing planetesimals which have properties matching those of primitive meteorite…

The Earth, Venus, Mars, and some extrasolar terrestrial planets have a mass and radius that is consistent with a mass fraction of about 30% metallic core and 70% silicate mantle. At the inner frontier of the solar system, Mercury has a…

According to the sequential accretion model, giant planet formation is based first on the formation of a solid core which, when massive enough, can gravitationally bind gas from the nebula to form the envelope. In order to trigger the…

Terrestrial planets form in a series of dynamical steps from the solid component of circumstellar disks. First, km-sized planetesimals form likely via a combination of sticky collisions, turbulent concentration of solids, and gravitational…

Planets form in protoplanetary discs. Their masses, distribution, and orbits sensitively depend on the structure of the protoplanetary discs. However, what sets the initial structure of the discs in terms of mass, radius and accretion rate…

A balanced ratio of ocean to land is believed to be essential for an Earth-like biosphere and one may conjecture that plate-tectonics planets should be similar in geological properties. After all, the volume of continental crust evolves…

We propose a pebble-driven planet formation scenario to form giant planets with high multiplicity and large orbital distances in the early gas disk phase. We perform N-body simulations to investigate the growth and migration of low-mass…

At least 30\% of main sequence stars host planets with sizes of between 1 and 4 Earth radii and orbital periods of less than 100 days. We use N-body simulations including a model for gas-assisted pebble accretion and disk--planet tidal…

The field of extrasolar planets has rapidly expanded to include the detection of planets with masses smaller than that of Uranus. Many of these are expected to have little or no hydrogen and helium gas and we might find Earth analogs among…

Observations of exoplanetary spectra are leading to unprecedented constraints on their atmospheric elemental abundances, particularly O/H, C/H, and C/O ratios. Recent studies suggest that elemental ratios could provide important constraints…

Giant planets are tens to thousands of times as massive as the Earth, and many times as large. Most of their volumes are occupied by hydrogen and helium, the primary constituents of the protostellar disks from which they formed.…

Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…

The heavy element content of giant exoplanets, inferred from structure models based on their radius and mass, often exceeds predictions based on classical core accretion. Pebble drift, coupled with volatile evaporation, has been proposed as…

We describe a coagulation model that leads to the rapid formation of super-Earths and the cores of gas giant planets. Interaction of collision fragments with the gaseous disk is the crucial element of this model. The gas entrains small…

During the late stage of planet formation when Mars-size cores appear, interactions among planetary cores can excite their orbital eccentricities, speed their merges and thus sculpture the final architecture of planet systems. This series…

Super-Earths with orbital periods less than 100 days are extremely abundant around Sun-like stars. It is unlikely that these planets formed at their current locations. Rather, they likely formed at large distances from the star and…

The origin of Mercury's anomalous core and low FeO surface mineralogy are outstanding questions in planetary science. Mercury's composition may result from cosmochemical controls on the precursor solids that accreted to form Mercury. High…

Planets between 1-4 Earth radii with orbital periods <100 days are strikingly common. The migration model proposes that super-Earths migrate inwards and pile up at the disk inner edge in chains of mean motion resonances. After gas disk…

Terrestrial exoplanets likely form initial atmospheres through outgassing during and after accretion, although there is currently no first-principles understanding of how to connect a planet's bulk composition to its early atmospheric…

The physical process creating layered structure in planetary rocky bodies is considered here to be multicomponent solidification. This is a unified alternative approach to the present interpretations where each layer is reasoned and matched…