Related papers: Asteroids and Comets
The great diversity of extrasolar planetary systems has challenged our understanding of how planets form, and how their orbits evolve as they form. Among the various processes that may account for this diversity, the gravitational…
Over the past decade, progress in observational capabilities, combined with theoretical advancements, have transformed our comprehension of the physics and chemistry during planet formation. Despite these important steps forward, open…
The origins of planets, and perhaps life itself, is intrinsically linked to the chemistry of planet formation. In this chapter we will attempt to explore the chemistry of planet-forming disks from the perspective of knowledge gained from…
The solid content of circumstellar disks is inherited from the interstellar medium: dust particles of at most a micrometer in size. Protoplanetary disks are the environment where these dust grains need to grow at least 13 orders of…
The recent detection of planets around very low mass stars raises the question of the formation, composition and potential habitability of these objects. We use planetary system formation models to infer the properties, in particular their…
Protoplanetary disks are quasi-steady structures whose evolution and dispersal determine the environment for planet formation. I review the theory of protoplanetary disk evolution and its connection to observations. Substantial progress has…
Exocomets are small bodies releasing gas and dust which orbit stars other than the Sun. Their existence was first inferred from the detection of variable absorption features in stellar spectra in the late 1980s using spectroscopy. More…
Satellites of asteroids have been discovered in nearly every known small body population, and a remarkable aspect of the known satellites is the diversity of their properties. They tell a story of vast differences in formation and evolution…
The formation and evolution of a circumstellar disk in magnetized cloud cores is investigated from prestellar core stage until sim 10^4 yr after protostar formation. In the circumstellar disk, fragmentation first occurs due to gravitational…
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…
The goal of planet formation as a field of study is not only to provide the understanding of how planets come into existence. It is also an interdisciplinary bridge which links astronomy to geology and mineralogy. Recent observations of…
The formation, structure and evolution of protoplanetary discs is considered. The formation of giant planets within the environment of these models is also discussed.
Essentially everything of astronomical interest is either part of a galaxy, or from a galaxy, or otherwise relevant to the origin or evolution of galaxies. Diverse examples are that the isotropic composition of meteorites provides clues to…
Water is crucial for the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. Recent studies of the water content in early forming planetary systems similar to our own show that water is an abundant and ubiquitous molecule, initially synthesized on…
In planetary science, accretion is the process in which solids agglomerate to form larger and larger objects and eventually planets are produced. The initial conditions are a disc of gas and microscopic solid particles, with a total mass of…
I attempt to summarize our knowledge of planet formation in evolving protoplanetary discs. I first review the physics of disc evolution and dispersal. For most of the disc lifetime evolution is driven by accretion and photoevaporation, and…
How do planetary systems, in general, and our own Solar System (SS), in particular, form? In conjunction, Astronomy and Isotope Cosmochemistry provide us with powerful tools to answer this age-old question. In this contribution, we review…
The initial conditions, physics, and outcome of planet formation are now constrained by detailed observations of protoplanetary disks, laboratory experiments, and the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. These…
Stars form from the gravitational collapse of dense molecular cloud cores. In the protostellar phase, mass accretes from the core onto a protostar, likely through an accretion disk, and it is during this phase that the initial masses of…
Astrophysical jets are associated with the formation of young stars of all masses, stellar and massive black holes, and perhaps even with the formation of massive planets. Their role in the formation of planets, stars, and galaxies is…