Related papers: The Solar System: structural overview, origins and…
These notes provide an introduction to the theory of the formation and early evolution of planetary systems. Topics covered include the structure, evolution and dispersal of protoplanetary disks; the formation of planetesimals, terrestrial…
Only three processes, operant during the formation of the Solar System, are responsible for the diversity of matter in the Solar System and are directly responsible for planetary internal-structures, including planetocentric nuclear fission…
The growth and composition of Earth is a direct consequence of planet formation throughout the Solar System. We discuss the known history of the Solar System, the proposed stages of growth and how the early stages of planet formation may be…
Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…
The standard picture of planet formation posits that giant gas planets are over-grown rocky planets massive enough to attract enormous gas atmospheres. It has been shown recently that the opposite point of view is physically plausible: the…
The inner solar system possesses a unique orbital structure in which there are no planets inside the Mercury orbit and the mass is concentrated around the Venus and Earth orbits. The origins of these features still remain unclear. We…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
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…
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…
This chapter presents a (partial) review of the information we can derive on the early history of the Solar System from radioactive nuclei of very different half-life, which were recognized to have been present alive in pristine solids. In…
Giant planets dominate the mass of many planetary systems, including the Solar System, and represent the best-characterized class of extrasolar planets. Understanding the formation of giant planets bridges the high mass end of the planet…
Most mechanisms proposed for the formation of planets are modified versions of the mechanism proposed for the solar system. Here we argue that, in terms of those planetary systems which have been observed, the case for the solar system…
There is strong evidence that the planets in the solar system evolved from a disk-shaped solar nebula ~4.56 Gyr ago. By studying young stars in various evolutionary stages, one aims at tracing back the early history of the solar system, in…
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…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…
A question central to understanding the origin of our solar system is: how do planets form in circumstellar disks around young stars? Because of the complex nature of the physical processes involved, multi-wavelength observations of large…
Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing and orbital eccentricities of giant planets, can be explained if the early Solar System evolved through a dynamical instability followed by migration of planets in…
The origins of planets, and perhaps life itself, is intrinsically linked to the chemistry of planet formation. In this chapter we will attempt to explore the chemistry of planet-forming disks from the perspective of knowledge gained from…
The origin of the regular satellites ties directly to planetary formation in that the satellites form in gas and dust disks around the giant planets and may be viewed as mini-solar systems, involving a number of closely related underlying…