Related papers: Extraterrestrial sedimentary rocks on Earth

The 1908 June 30 Tunguska Event (TE) is one of the best studied cases of cosmic body impacting the Earth with global effects. However, still today, significant doubts are casted on the different proposed event reconstructions, because of…

Observations of dusty debris disks can be used to test theories of planetesimal coagulation. Planetesimals of sizes up to a couple thousand kms are embedded in these disks and their mutual collisions generate the small dust grains that are…

Ancient hydrology is recorded by sedimentary rocks on Mars. The most voluminous sedimentary rocks that formed during Mars' Hesperian period are sulfate-rich rocks, explored by the $Opportunity$ rover from 2004-2012 and soon to be…

The physical composition and structure of meteoroids gives us insight into the formation processes of their parent asteroids and comets. The strength of and fundamental grain sizes in meteoroids tell us about the environment in which small…

We discuss a new class of exoplanets that appear to be emitting a tail of dusty effluents. These disintegrating planets are found close to their host stars and have very hot, and likely molten, surfaces. The properties of the dust should…

Debris disks around main-sequence stars are believed to derive from planetesimal populations that have accreted at early epochs and survived possible planet formation processes. While debris disks must contain solids in a broad range of…

The presence of highly siderophile elements in Earth's mantle indicates that a small percentage of Earth's mass was delivered after the last giant impact in a stage of 'late accretion.' There is ongoing debate about the nature of…

Asteroids and other Small Solar System Bodies (SSSBs) are of high general and scientific interest in many aspects. The origin, formation, and evolution of our Solar System (and other planetary systems) can be better understood by analysing…

We use new interior models of cold planets to investigate the mass-radius relationships of solid exoplanets, considering planets made primarily of iron, silicates, water, and carbon compounds. We find that the mass-radius relationships for…

Differentiation in terrestrial planets is expected to include the formation of a metallic iron core. We predict the existence of terrestrial planets that have differentiated but have no metallic core--planets that are effectively a giant…

Models predict that more than half of all impacting meteoroids should be carbonaceous, reflecting the abundance of carbon-rich asteroids in the main belt and near-Earth space. Yet carbonaceous chondrites represent only about 4% of…

Meteorites contain minerals from Solar System asteroids with different properties (like size, presence of water, core formation). We provide new mid-IR transmission spectra of powdered meteorites to obtain templates of how mid-IR spectra of…

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…

The motion of bodies ejected from the Earth was studied, and the probabilities of collisions of such bodies with the present terrestrial planets were calculated. The dependences of these probabilities on velocities, angles and points of…

Combining isotopic constraints from meteorite data with dynamical models of planet formation proves to be advantageous in identifying the best model for terrestrial planet formation. Prior studies have shown that the probability of…

Mechanisms such as collisions of rocky bodies or cometary activity give rise to dusty debris disks. Debris disks trace the leftover building blocks of planets, and thus also planetary composition. HD 172555, a stellar twin of beta Pic,…

The detection of lower mass planets now being reported via radial velocity and microlensing surveys suggests that they may be ubiquitous. If missions such as Kepler are able to confirm this, the detection and study of rocky planets via…

Early Solar System (SS) planetesimals constitute the parent bodies of most meteorites investigated today. Nucleosynthetic isotope anomalies of bulk meteorites have revealed a dichotomy between non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (CC)…

Research over the past four decades has shown a rich variety of complex organic molecular content in some meteorites. This current study is an attempt to gain a better insight into the thermal conditions experienced by these molecules…

Super-Earths, a class of planetary bodies with masses ranging from a few Earth-masses to slightly smaller than Uranus, have recently found a special place in the exoplanetary science. Being slightly larger than a typical terrestrial planet,…