Related papers: Planetary Felsic Crust Formation at Shallow Depth
The origin of Mercury still remains poorly understood compared to the other rocky planets of the Solar System. One of the most relevant constraints that any formation model has to fulfill refers to its internal structure, with a predominant…
The terrestrial planets formed by accretion of asteroid-like objects within the inner solar system's protoplanetary disk. Previous works have found that forming a small-mass Mars requires the disk to contain little mass beyond ~1.5 au…
To avoid known difficulties in planetesimal formation such as the drift or fragmentation barriers, many scenarios have been proposed. However, in these scenarios, planetesimals form in general only at some specific locations in…
Giant planet embryos are believed to be spawned by gravitational instability in massive extended (R ~ 100 AU) protostellar discs. In a recent paper we have shown that dust can sediment inside the embryos, as argued earlier by Boss (1998) in…
Water condensed as ice beyond the water snowline, the location in the Sun's natal gaseous disk where temperatures were below 170 K. As the disk evolved and cooled, the snowline moved inwards. A low temperature in the terrestrial…
Understanding the origin of comets requires knowledge of how the Solar System formed from a cloud of dust and gas 4.567 Gyr ago. Here, a review is presented of how the remnants of this formation process, meteorites and to a lesser extent…
The processes that led to the formation of the planetary bodies in the Solar System are still not fully understood. Using the results obtained with the comprehensive suite of instruments on-board ESA's Rosetta mission, we present evidence…
No planets exist inside the orbit of Mercury and the terrestrial planets of the solar system exhibit a localized configuration. According to thermal structure calculation of protoplanetary disks, a silicate condensation line (~ 1300 K) is…
After 25 years of laboratory research on protoplanetary dust agglomeration, a consistent picture of the various processes that involve colliding dust aggregates has emerged. Besides sticking, bouncing and fragmentation, other effects, like,…
The formation of solid macroscopic grains (pebbles) in protoplanetary discs is the first step toward planet formation. We aim to study the distribution of pebbles and the chemical composition of their ice mantles in a young protoplanetary…
Terrestrial planets, with silicate mantles and metallic cores, are likely to obtain water and carbon compounds during accretion. Here I examine the conditions that allow early formation of a surface water ocean (simultaneous with cooling to…
Terrestrial exoplanets likely form initial atmospheres through outgassing during and after accretion, although there is currently no first-principles understanding of how to connect a planet's bulk composition to its early atmospheric…
A rapidly growing body of observational results suggests that planet formation takes place preferentially at high metallicity. In the core accretion model of planet formation this is expected because heavy elements are needed to form the…
The ``minimum-mass solar nebula'' (MMSN) model estimates the surface density distribution of the protoplanetary disk by assuming the planets to have formed in situ. However, significant radial migration of the giant planets likely occurred…
Recently, seven Earth-sized planets were discovered around the M-dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Thanks to transit-timing variations, the masses and therefore the bulk densities of the planets have been constrained, suggesting that all TRAPPIST-1…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
We propose that chondrules are formed by radiative heating of pre-existing dust clumps during close fly-bys of planetesimals with incandescent lava at their surfaces. We show that the required temperatures and cooling rates are easily…
Planetesimal formation stage represents a major gap in our understanding of the planet formation process. The late-stage planet accretion models typically make arbitrary assumptions about planetesimals and pebbles distribution while the…
It is likely that multiple bodies with masses between those of Mars and Earth ("planetary embryos") formed in the outer planetesimal disk of the solar system. Some of these were likely scattered by the giant planets into orbits with…
The formation of the four terrestrial planets of the solar system is one of the most fundamental problems in the planetary sciences. However, the formation of Mercury remains poorly understood. We investigated terrestrial planet formation…