Related papers: The Changing Perception of the Solar System
The chaotic behaviour of the motion of the planets in our Solar System is well established. In this work to model a hypothetical extrasolar planetary system our Solar System was modified in such a way that we replaced the Earth by a more…
All four giant planets in the Solar system possess irregular satellites, characterized by large, highly eccentric and/or inclined orbits that are distinct from the nearly circular, uninclined orbits of the regular satellites. This…
There has been tremendous progress in observing oscillations in solar-type stars. In a few short years we have moved from ambiguous detections to firm measurements. We review the recent results, most of which have come from high-precision…
The large scale structure of the Solar System has been shaped by a transient dynamical instability that may have been triggered by the interaction of the giants planets with a massive primordial disk of icy debris. In this work, we…
The interface between the bright solar surface and the million-degree corona continues to hold the key to many unsolved problems in solar physics. Advances in instrumentation now allow us to observe the dynamic structures of the solar…
Earth's atmosphere has evolved as volatile species cycle between the atmosphere, ocean, biomass and the solid Earth. The geochemical, biological and astrophysical processes that control atmospheric evolution are reviewed from an "Earth…
Following the groundbreaking discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b in 1995, the field of planet formation has become a cornerstone of modern astrophysics. This is in part due to the revelation of an…
The basic geometry of the Solar System -- the shapes, spacings, and orientations of the planetary orbits -- has long been a subject of fascination as well as inspiration for planet formation theories. For exoplanetary systems, those same…
In expansion of our recent proposal (Physics, 2020, 2, 213-276) that the solar system's evolution occurred in two stages -- during the first stage, the gaseous giants formed (via disk instability), and, during the second stage (caused by an…
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…
Variations in the flux of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) at Earth during the last 4.6 billion years are constructed from information about the Star Formation Rate (SFR) in the Milky Way and the evolution of solar activity. The variations of GCR…
The organization of the orbits of most minor bodies in the Solar system seems to follow random patterns, the result of billions of years of chaotic dynamical evolution. Much as heterogeneous orbital behaviour is ubiquitous, dynamically…
Our understanding of extra-solar planet systems is highly driven by advances in observations in the past decade. Thanks to high precision spectrograph, we are able to reveal unseen companions to stars with the radial velocity method. High…
This paper reviews our current understanding of terrestrial planets formation. The focus is on computer simulations of the dynamical aspects of the accretion process. Throughout the chapter, we combine the results of these theoretical…
Solar neutrinos have been the subject of experimental study for almost half a century. The initial aim was '...to see into the interior of a star and thus verify directly the hypothesis of nuclear energy generation in stars'. Since then the…
Kant and Laplace suggested the Solar System formed from a rotating gaseous disk in the 18th century, but convincing evidence that young stars are indeed surrounded by such disks was not presented for another 200 years. As we move into the…
The very first stars to form in the Universe heralded an end to the cosmic dark ages and introduced new physical processes that shaped early cosmic evolution. Until now, it was thought that these stars lived short, solitary lives, with only…
I summarize 40 years of development of the standard solar model that is used to predict solar neutrino fluxes and then describe the current uncertainties in the predictions. I will also attempt to explain why it took so long, about three…
A question central to understanding the origin of our solar system is: how do planets form in circumstellar disks around young stars? Because of the complex nature of the physical processes involved, multi-wavelength observations of large…
The total and spectral irradiance varies over short time scales, i.e. from days to months, and longer time scales from years to decades, centuries, and beyond. In this talk we review the current understanding of irradiance changes from days…