Related papers: The Empty Primordial Asteroid Belt
Our goal is to understand primary accretion of the first planetesimals. The primitive meteorite record suggests that sizeable planetesimals formed in the asteroid belt over a period longer than a million years, each composed entirely of an…
The observationally complete sample of the main belt asteroids now spans more than two orders of magnitude in size and numbers more than 64,000 (excluding collisional family members). We undertook an analysis of asteroids' eccentricities…
Infrared studies have revealed debris likely related to planet formation in orbit around ~30% of youthful, intermediate mass, main sequence stars. We present evidence, based on atmospheric pollution by various elements heavier than helium,…
Recent simulations have shown that the formation of planets in circumbinary configurations (such as those recently discovered by Kepler) is dramatically hindered at the planetesimal accretion stage. The combined action of the binary and the…
Observations and models of giant planets indicate that such objects are enriched in heavy elements compared to solar abundances. The prevailing view is that giant planets accreted multiple Earth masses of heavy elements after the end of…
The past decade has seen major progress in our understanding of terrestrial planet formation. Yet key questions remain. In this review we first address the growth of 100 km-scale planetesimals as a consequence of dust coagulation and…
A large fraction of stars are formed in dense clusters. In the cluster, close encounters between stars at distances less than 100 au are common. It has been shown that during close encounters planets can transfer between stars. Such…
Substantial orbital migration of massive planets may occur in most extrasolar planetary systems. Since migration is likely to occur after a significant fraction of the dust has been locked up into planetesimals, ubiquitous migration could…
The last several years have brought about a dynamic shift in the view of exoplanetary systems in the post-main sequence, perhaps epitomized by the evidence for surviving rocky planetary bodies at white dwarfs. Coinciding with the launch of…
V-type asteroids are a taxonomic class whose surface is associated to a basaltic composition. The only known source of V-type asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt is (4) Vesta, that is located in the inner part of the belt. However, many…
The size distribution of asteroids in the solar system suggests that they formed top-down, with 100-1000 km bodies forming from the gravitational collapse of dense clumps of small solid particles. We investigate the conditions under which…
Astronomical observations reveal that protoplanetary disks around young stars commonly have ring- and gap-like structures in their dust distributions. These features are associated with pressure bumps trapping dust particles at specific…
Terrestrial planet formation (TPF) is a difficult problem that has vexed researchers for decades. Numerical models are only partially successful at reproducing the orbital architecture of the inner planets, but have generally not considered…
In recent years a paradigm shift has occurred in exoplanet science, wherein low-mass stars are increasingly viewed as a foundational pillar of the search for potentially habitable worlds in the solar neighborhood. However, the formation…
Recent exoplanet surveys revealed that for solar-type stars, close-in Super-Earths are ubiquitous and many of them are in multi-planet systems. These systems are more compact than the Solar System's terrestrial planets. However, there have…
Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the terrestrial planets of the solar system. Either they formed by collisions among planetary embryos from the inner solar system, or…
Super-Earths with orbital periods less than 100 days are extremely abundant around Sun-like stars. It is unlikely that these planets formed at their current locations. Rather, they likely formed at large distances from the star and…
The isotopic composition of meteorites linked to S-complex asteroids has been used to suggest that these asteroids originated in the terrestrial planet's region, i.e., within 1.5 au, and later got implanted into the main asteroid belt…
Planets orbiting a planetesimal circumstellar disc can migrate inward from their initial positions because of dynamical friction between planets and planetesimals. The migration rate depends on the disc mass and on its time evolution.…
The inner solar system possesses a unique orbital structure in which there are no planets inside the Mercury orbit and the mass is concentrated around the Venus and Earth orbits. The origins of these features still remain unclear. We…