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Although petrologic, chemical and isotopic studies of ordinary chondrites and meteorites in general have largely helped establish a chronology of the earliest events of planetesimal formation and their evolution, there are several questions…
Earth is depleted in volatile elements relative to chondritic meteorites, its possible building blocks. The extent of this depletion increases with decreasing condensation temperature, and is approximated by a cumulative normal…
Living cells exhibit a complex organization comprising numerous compartments, among which are RNA- and protein-rich membraneless, liquid-like organelles known as biomolecular condensates. Energy-consuming processes regulate their formation…
A mechanism of the replication of proto-RNAs in oligomer world is proposed. The replication is carried out by a minimum cycle which is sustained by a ligase and a helicase. We expect that such a cycle actually worked in the primordial soup…
Chondrules are primitive materials in the Solar System. They are formed in the first about 3 Myr of the Solar System's history. This timescale is longer than that of Mars formation, and it is conceivable that protoplanets, planetesimals and…
Chondrites are undifferentiated sediments of material left over from the earliest solar system and are widely considered as representatives of the unprocessed building blocks of the terrestrial planets. The chondrites, along with processed…
We present a simple model for low-mass planet formation and subsequent evolution within "transition" discs. We demonstrate quantitatively that the predicted and observed structure of such discs are prime birthsites of planets. Planet…
The interstellar delivery of carbon atoms locked into molecules might be one of the key ingredients for the emergence of life. Cyanopolyynes are carbon chains delimited at their two extremities by an atom of hydrogen and a cyano group, so…
Biomolecules can be synthesized in interstellar ice grains subject to UV radiation and cosmic rays. I show that on time scales of $\gtrsim 10^{6}$ years, these processes lead to the formation of large percolation clusters of organic…
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…
We explore here the idea, reminiscent in some respect of Von Weizsacker's (1944) and Alfven's (1976) outmoded cosmogonies, that long-lived vortices in a turbulent protoplanetary nebula can capture large amount of solid particles and…
Even the simplest organisms are too complex to have spontaneously arisen fully-formed, yet precursors to first life must have emerged ab initio from their environment. A watershed event was the appearance of the first entity capable of…
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…
Understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of habitable planets in extrasolar planetary systems is a challenging task. In this respect, systems with multiple giant planets and/or multiple stars present special complications. The…
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…
Planet formation encompasses processes that span a remarkable 40 magnitudes in mass, ranging from collisions between micron-sized grains inherited from the ISM to the accretion of gas by giant planets. The planet formation process takes…
Models of planet formation are built on underlying physical processes. In order to make sense of the origin of the planets we must first understand the origin of their building blocks. This review comes in two parts. The first part presents…
The final stage in the formation of terrestrial planets consists of the accumulation of ~1000-km ``planetary embryos'' and a swarm of billions of 1-10 km ``planetesimals.'' During this process, water-rich material is accreted by the…
With n-body simulations, we model terrestrial circumbinary planet (CBP) formation with an initial surface density profile motivated by hydrodynamic circumbinary gas disc simulations. The binary plays an important role in shaping the initial…
A key question in astronomy is how ubiquitous Earth-like rocky planets are. The formation of terrestrial planets in our solar system was strongly influenced by the radioactive decay heat of short-lived radionuclides (SLRs), particularly…