Related papers: Planet formation and the evolution of the Solar Sy…
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…
Planetary systems are born in the disks of gas, dust and rocky fragments that surround newly formed stars. Solid content assembles into ever-larger rocky fragments that eventually become planetary embryos. These then continue their growth…
Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing of the giant planets, can be explained if planets radially migrated by exchanging orbital energy and momentum with outer disk planetesimals. Neptune's…
Evidence of mutually inclined planetary orbits has been reported for giant planets these last years. Here we aim to study the impact of eccentric and inclined massive giant planets on the terrestrial planet formation process, and…
The basic structure of the solar system is set by the presence of low-mass terrestrial planets in its inner part and giant planets in its outer part. This is the result of the formation of a system of multiple embryos with approximately the…
Exoplanets are organized in a broad array of orbital configurations that reflect their formation along with billions of years of dynamical processing through gravitational interactions. This history is encoded in the angular momentum…
The formation of the solar system's giant planets predated the ultimate epoch of massive impacts that concluded the process of terrestrial planet formation. Following their formation, the giant planets' orbits evolved through an episode of…
The solar system was most likely born in a star cluster containing at least 1000 stars. It is highly probable that this cluster environment influenced various properties of the solar system like its chemical composition, size and the…
We address three questions regarding solar system planets. What determined their number? Why are their orbits nearly circular and coplanar? How long did they take to form? Runaway accretion in a disk of small bodies resulted in a tiny…
I present here a new, indivisible planetary science paradigm, a wholly self-consistent vision of the nature of matter in the Solar System, and dynamics and energy sources of planets. Massive-core planets formed by condensing and raining-out…
From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution. By far most of the planets known beyond the…
Giant planets are tens to thousands of times as massive as the Earth, and many times as large. Most of their volumes are occupied by hydrogen and helium, the primary constituents of the protostellar disks from which they formed.…
Our Solar System includes the Sun, eight major planets and their moons, along with numerous asteroids, comets, and dust particles, collectively known as the small Solar System bodies. Small bodies are relics from the birth of the Solar…
It has been proposed recently that the first step in the formation of both rocky and gas giant planets is dust sedimentation into a solid core inside a gas clump (giant planet embryo). The clumps are then assumed to migrate closer to the…
This chapter of the book Planetary Ring Systems addresses the origin of planetary rings, one of the least understood processes related to planet formation and evolution. Whereas rings seem ubiquitous around giant planets, their great…
The outer giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, pose a challenge to theories of planet formation. They exist in a region of the Solar System where long dynamical timescales and a low primordial density of material would have conspired to make…
Exoplanets are typically thought to form in protoplanetary disks left over from protostellar disk of their newly formed host star. However, additional planetary formation and evolution routes may exist in old evolved binary systems. Here we…
Planetary satellites are an integral part of the heirarchy of planetary systems. Here we make two predictions concerning their formation. First, primordial satellites, which have an array of distinguishing characteristics, form only around…
Planet formation is generally described in terms of a system containing the host star and a protoplanetary disc, of which the internal properties (e.g. mass and metallicity) determine the properties of the resulting planetary system.…
Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…