Related papers: Late Accretion and the Late Veneer
Pebbles of millimeter sizes are abundant in protoplanetary discs around young stars. Chondrules inside primitive meteorites - formed by melting of dust aggregate pebbles or in impacts between planetesimals - have similar sizes. The role of…
By plotting empirical chemical element abundances on Earth relative to the Sun and normalized to silicon versus their first ionization potentials, we confirm the existence of a correlation reported earlier. To explain this, we develop a…
We review the formation of large-scale heterogeneity in the solid Earth from the magma ocean phase to the present day, focusing on lower-mantle structure and evolution, as well as continental formation and its impact on interior-exterior…
Chemical geodynamics is a term coined nearly forty years ago to highlight the important link between Earth's geochemical evolution and plate tectonics & mantle convection. Significant progress in our understanding of this connection has…
A giant impact origin for the Moon is generally accepted, but many aspects of lunar formation remain poorly understood and debated. \'Cuk et al. (2016) proposed that an impact that left the Earth-Moon system with high obliquity and angular…
The planet Mercury possesses an anomalously large iron core, and a correspondingly high bulk density. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed in order to explain such a large iron content. A long-standing idea holds that Mercury once…
The solar and extra solar gas giants appear to have diverse internal structure and metallicities. We examine a potential cause for these dispersions in the context of the conventional sequential accretion formation scenario. In principle,…
The lunar farside highlands problem refers to the curious and unexplained fact that the farside lunar crust is thicker, on average, than the nearside crust. Here we recognize the crucial influence of Earthshine, and propose that it…
Although petrologic, chemical and isotopic studies of ordinary chondrites and meteorites in general have largely helped establish a chronology of the earliest events of planetesimal formation and their evolution, there are several questions…
Late accretion onto the Hadean Earth included large impacts that could have influenced early habitability, either by sterilizing the planet or alternatively catalyzing the origin of life by delivering iron required to create a reducing…
Investigating in the laboratory the process of matter accretion onto forming stars through scaled experiments is important in order to better understand star and planetary systems formation and evolution. Such experiments can indeed…
The dominant accretion process leading to the formation of the terrestrial planets of the Solar System is a subject of intense scientific debate. Two radically different scenarios have been proposed. The classic scenario starts from a disk…
Large satellite constellations are one of the main reasons for an increasing amount of mass being brought into low Earth orbit in recent years. After end of life, the satellites, as well as rocket stages, reenter Earth's atmosphere. This…
Pebble accretion refers to the growth of planetary bodies through the accretion of pebble-sized particles. Pebbles are defined in terms of their aerodynamically size $\tau_s$, which describes the level of coupling to the disk gas.…
The Moon exhibits striking geological asymmetries in elevation, crustal thickness, and composition between its nearside and farside. Although several scenarios have been proposed to explain these asymmetries, their origin remains debated.…
Current layered accretion models neglect the properties of the ``dead zone''. However, as argued here from simple considerations, the thickness of this zone is a critical quantity when the disc is in hydrostatic equilibrium. It controls not…
Accretion onto compact objects is one of the most fundamental phenomena in the astrophysics, powering some of the most luminous objects in the sky. Along with this, accretion has also a key impact on the evolution of the Universe, through…
We attempt a novel mechanism to understand the underlying cause of late-time cosmic acceleration using a distinguished physical process taking place in the late Universe. The turning of massive neutrinos from relativistic to…
It is now understood that the accretion of terrestrial planets naturally involves giant collisions, the moon-forming impact being a well known example. In the aftermath of such collisions the surface of the surviving planet is very hot and…
Planetesimal accretion during planet formation is usually treated as collisionless. Such accretion from a uniform and dynamically cold disk predicts protoplanets with slow retrograde rotation. However, if the building blocks of…