Related papers: Meteorites and Planet Formation
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…
Our Sun and planetary system were born about 4.5 billion years ago. How did this happen and what is our heritage from these early times? This review tries to address these questions from an astrochemical point of view. On the one hand, we…
Chondrite meteorites are believed to represent the building blocks of the solar nebula, out of which our solar system formed. They are a mixture of silicate and oxide objects (chondrules and refractory inclusions) that experienced extremely…
Planetary satellites are an integral part of the heirarchy of planetary systems. Here we make two predictions concerning their formation. First, primordial satellites, which have an array of distinguishing characteristics, form only around…
We know that giant planets played a crucial role in the making of our Solar System. The discovery of giant planets orbiting other stars is a formidable opportunity to learn more about these objects, what is their composition, how various…
Asteroids and comets are remnants from the era of Solar System formation over 4.5 billion years ago, and therefore allow us to address two fundamental questions in astronomy: what was the nature of our protoplanetary disk, and how did the…
This chapter of the book Planetary Ring Systems addresses the origin of planetary rings, one of the least understood processes related to planet formation and evolution. Whereas rings seem ubiquitous around giant planets, their great…
This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy - the discovery some fifteen years ago of the first planets around other stars (exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own…
Progressive astronomical characterization of planet-forming disks and rocky exoplanets highlight the need for increasing interdisciplinary efforts to understand the birth and life cycle of terrestrial worlds in a unified picture. Here, we…
Earth occasionally crosses the debris streams produced by comets and other active bodies in our solar system. These manifest meteor showers that provide an opportunity to explore these bodies without a need to visit them in-situ.…
The diversity in mass and composition of planetary atmospheres stems from the different building blocks present in protoplanetary discs and from the different physical and chemical processes that these experience during the planetary…
Radioisotopic ages for meteorites and their components provide constraints on the evolution of small bodies: timescales of accretion, thermal and aqueous metamorphism, differentiation, cooling and impact metamorphism. Realising that the…
Essentially everything of astronomical interest is either part of a galaxy, or from a galaxy, or otherwise relevant to the origin or evolution of galaxies. Diverse examples are that the isotropic composition of meteorites provides clues to…
All planets and satellites of our solar system are subject to a continuous rain of material, ranging in size from specks of dust to objects the size of boulders. Upon impact, these objects deposit their kinetic energy into the incident…
Planets form and obtain their compositions from the leftover material present in protoplanetary disks of dust and gas surrounding young stars. The chemical make-up of a disk influences every aspect of planetary composition including their…
Chondritic meteorites, the building blocks of terrestrial planets, are made of an out-of-equilibrium assemblage of solids formed at high and low temperatures, either in our Solar system or previous generations of stars. This was considered…
How do planetary systems, in general, and our own Solar System (SS), in particular, form? In conjunction, Astronomy and Isotope Cosmochemistry provide us with powerful tools to answer this age-old question. In this contribution, we review…
Small asteroids intersecting Earth's orbit can deliver extraterrestrial rocks to the Earth, called meteorites. This process is accompanied by a luminous phenomena in the atmosphere, called bolides or fireballs. Observations of bolides…
The great diversity of extrasolar planetary systems has challenged our understanding of how planets form, and how their orbits evolve as they form. Among the various processes that may account for this diversity, the gravitational…
Understanding stellar evolution and its effect on planetary systems is crucial for correctly interpreting the chemical constraints of exo-planetary material that can be given to us by white dwarfs. This article will describe how asteroids,…