Related papers: Earth and Mars -- distinct inner Solar System prod…

Water and land surfaces on a planet interact with gases in the atmosphere and with radiation from the star. These interactions define the environments that prevail on the planet, some of which may be more amenable to prebiotic chemistry,…

An origin of Earth life on Mars would resolve significant inconsistencies between the inferred history of life and Earth's geologic history. Life as we know it utilizes amino acids, nucleic acids, and lipids for the metabolic,…

The high occurrence on Earth of ordinary chondrite meteorites and the making of models based upon arbitrary assumptions has led to some confusion about the origin of ordinary chondrites. Major element fractionation among chondrites has been…

Terrestrial planets have been found orbiting Sun-like stars with extremely short periods --- some as short as 4 hours. These "ultra-short-period planets" or "hot Earths" are so strongly irradiated that any initial H/He atmosphere has…

The dominant accretion process leading to the formation of the terrestrial planets of the Solar System is a subject of intense scientific debate. Two radically different scenarios have been proposed. The classic scenario starts from a disk…

In this chapter we review the astrophysical origins of Earth's carbon, starting from the products of the Big Bang and culminating with the Earth's formation. We review the measured compositions of different primitive objects including…

The migration of U and Th inside a planet is controlled by its oxidation state imposed by the volatile composition. In the deep interior of a planet, an absence of oxidative volatiles will cause U and Th to stay in a state of metal or low…

Here we discuss the current state of knowledge on how atmospheric escape processes can fractionate noble gas isotopes and moderately volatile rock-forming elements that populate primordial atmospheres, magma ocean related environments, and…

Here it is shown how to find the interior structure of a variety of rock-and-iron planetary bodies by using the rock density and some aspects of the core density as known for the Earth and using a convection principle for the iron-rich…

The Solar System includes two planets --- Mercury and Mars --- significantly less massive than Earth, and all evidence indicates that planets of similar size orbit many stars. In fact, one of the first exoplanets to be discovered is a…

The problem of the formation of the Moon is still not explained satisfactorily. While it is a generally accepted scenario that the last giant impact on Earth between some 50 to 100 million years after the starting of the formation of the…

Aims. Particles ejected from the lunar surface via hypervelocity impacts form a torus between the Earth and the Moon. According to our previous study (Yang et al., A\&A, 659, A120), among them about $2.3\times10^{-4}\,\mathrm{kg/s}$…

The timescales of accretion, core formation, and magmatic differentiation in planetary bodies can be constrained using extinct radionuclide systems. Experiments have shown that Ni becomes more siderophile with decreasing pressure, which is…

The bulk chemical compositions of planets are uncertain, even for major elements such as Mg and Si. This is due to the fact that the samples available for study all originate from relatively shallow depths. Comparison of the stable isotope…

Noble gases are powerful probes of the Earth's early history, as they are chemically inert. Neon isotopic ratios in deep mantle plumes suggest that nebular gases were incorporated into the Earth's interior. This evidence implies the Earth's…

The giant impact hypothesis for Moon formation successfully explains the dynamic properties of the Earth-Moon system but remains challenged by the similarity of isotopic fingerprints of the terrestrial and lunar mantles. Moreover, recent…

The bulk silicate Earth (BSE) is depleted in moderately volatile elements, indicating Earth formed from a mixture of volatile-rich and -poor materials. To better constrain the origin and nature of Earth's volatile-rich building blocks, we…

The origin of Uranus and Neptune is still unknown. In particular, it has been challenging for planet formation models to form the planets in their current radial distances within the expected lifetime of the solar nebula. In this paper, we…

Probing the interiors of the gas giant planets in our Solar System is not an easy task. It requires a set of accurate measurements combined with theoretical models that are used to infer the planetary composition and its depth dependence.…

Jupiter and Saturn formed in a few million years (Haisch et al. 2001) from a gas-dominated protoplanetary disk, and were susceptible to gas-driven migration of their orbits on timescales of only ~100,000 years (Armitage 2007). Hydrodynamic…