Related papers: Asteroids and Comets
These notes provide an introduction to the theory of the formation and early evolution of planetary systems. Topics covered include the structure, evolution and dispersal of protoplanetary disks; the formation of planetesimals, terrestrial…
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…
This review is based on lectures given at the 45th Saas-Fee Advanced Course 'From Protoplanetary Disks to Planet Formation' held in March 2015 in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. Starting with an overview of the main characterictics of the…
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…
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…
Protoplanetary disks are thought to be the birth places of planetary systems. The formation and the subsequent evolution of protoplanetary disks are regulated by the star formation process, which begins with the collapse of a cloud core to…
Planet formation encompasses processes that span a remarkable 40 magnitudes in mass, ranging from collisions between micron-sized grains inherited from the ISM to the accretion of gas by giant planets. The planet formation process takes…
The growing body of observational data on extrasolar planets and protoplanetary disks has stimulated intense research on planet formation and evolution in the past few years. The extremely diverse, sometimes unexpected physical and orbital…
Our current understanding of the physical processes of star formation is reviewed, with emphasis on processes occurring in molecular clouds like those observed nearby. The dense cores of these clouds are predicted to undergo gravitational…
Accreting compact objects are crucial to understand several important astrophysical phenomena such as Type Ia supernovae, gravitational waves, or X-ray and $\gamma$-ray bursts. In addition, they are natural laboratories to infer fundamental…
The Rosetta mission and its exquisite measurements have revived the debate on whether comets are pristine planetesimals or collisionally evolved objects. We investigate the collisional evolution experienced by the precursors of current…
Stars and planets can be seen as the second fundamental building blocks of baryons in the universe (only second to the dust and gas in molecular clouds). Their formation involves dust grain growth of many orders of magnitude and a myriad of…
Circumstellar disks are the sites of planet formation, and the very high incidence of extrasolar planets implies that most of them actually form planetary systems. Studying the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks can thus place…
This paper provides a brief summary and overview of the astrochemistry associated with the formation of stars and planets. It is aimed at new researchers in the field to enable them to obtain a quick overview of the landscape and key…
Debris disks are exoplanetary systems containing planets, minor bodies (such as asteroids and comets) and debris dust. Unseen planets are presumed to perturb the minor bodies into crossing orbits, generating small dust grains that are…
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…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
The formation of a star is a dynamic process fed by the gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud core. Theoretical models and observations suggest that the majority of this infalling material settles into a protoplanetary disk before…
A clear understanding of the chemical processing of matter, as it is transferred from a molecular cloud to a planetary system, depends heavily on knowledge of the physical conditions endured by gas and dust as these accrete onto a disk and…
Collisions are one of the key processes shaping planetary systems. Asteroid families are outcomes of such collisions still identifiable across our solar system. The families provide a unique view of catastrophic disruption phenomena and…