Related papers: Extreme close encounters between proto-Mercury and…
Mercury has an unusually large metal core comprising ~70% of its mass comparing to all other terrestrial planets in the solar system. Giant impacts can remove a significant fraction of the silicate mantle of a chondritic proto-Mercury and…
The inner solar system's modern orbital architecture provides inferences into the epoch of terrestrial planet formation; a ~100 Myr time period of planet growth via collisions with planetesimals and other proto-planets. While classic…
Modern terrestrial planet formation models are highly successful at consistently generating planets with masses and orbits analogous to those of Earth and Venus. In stark contrast to classic theoretical predictions and inferred demographics…
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…
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…
Models of terrestrial planet formation for our solar system have been successful in producing planets with masses and orbits similar to those of Venus and Earth. However, these models have generally failed to produce Mars-sized objects…
The classical scenario of terrestrial planet formation is characterized by a phase of giant impacts among Moon-to-Mars mass planetary embryos. While the classic model and its adaptations have produced adequate analogs of the outer three…
Mercury is notoriously difficult to form in solar system simulations, due to its small mass and iron-rich composition. Smooth particle hydrodynamics simulations of collisions have found that a Mercury-like body could be formed by one or…
Of the solar system's four terrestrial planets, the origin of Mercury is perhaps the most mysterious. Modern numerical simulations designed to model the dynamics of terrestrial planet formation systematically fail to replicate Mercury;…
The process leading to the formation of the terrestrial planet remains elusive. In a previous publication, we have shown that, if the first generation of planetesimals forms in a ring at about 1 AU and the gas disk's density peaks at the…
A successful solar system model must reproduce the four terrestrial planets. Here, we focus on 1) the likelihood of forming Mercury and the four terrestrial planets in the same system (a 4-P system); 2) the orbital properties and masses of…
We discuss the current state of knowledge of terrestrial planet formation from the aspects of different planet formation models and isotopic data from 182Hf-182W, U-Pb, lithophile-siderophile elements, 48Ca/44Ca isotope samples from…
In spite of substantial advancements in simulating planet formation, the planet Mercury's diminutive mass, isolated orbit, and the absence of planets with shorter orbital periods in the solar system continue to befuddle numerical accretion…
The absence of planets interior to Mercury continues to puzzle terrestrial planet formation models, particularly when contrasted with the relatively high derived occurrence rates of short-period planets around Sun-like stars. Recent work…
During the final stage of planetary formation, different formation pathways of planetary embryos could significantly influence the observed variations in planetary densities. Of the approximately 5,000 exoplanets identified to date, a…
We study the evolution of debris created in the giant impacts expected during the final stages of terrestrial planet formation. The starting point is the debris created in a simulation of the Moon-forming impact. The dynamical evolution is…
The newly formed giant planets may have migrated and crossed a number of mutual mean motion resonances (MMRs) when smaller objects (embryos) were accreting to form the terrestrial planets. We investigated the effects of the…
During the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, hit-and-run collisions are about as common as accretionary mergers, for expected velocities and angles of giant impacts. Average hit-and-runs leave two major remnants plus debris: the…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…
Massive cores of the giant planets are thought to have formed in a gas disk by accretion of pebble-size particles whose accretional cross-section is enhanced by aerodynamic gas drag [1][2]. A commonly held view is that the terrestrial…