Related papers: Meteorites and Planet Formation
The standard model for planet formation is a bottom-up process in which the origin of rocky and gaseous planets can be traced back to the collision of micron-sized dust grains within the gas-rich environment of protoplanetary disks. Key…
Rings are ubiquitous around giant planets in our Solar System. They evolve jointly with the nearby satellite system. They could form either during the giant planet formation process or much later, as a result of large scale dynamical…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
Shock waves and the associated phenomena generated by strongly ablating meteoroids with sizes greater than a few millimeters in the lower transitional flow regime of the Earth's atmosphere are the least explored aspect of meteor science. In…
Despite the increase in observational data on exoplanets, the processes that lead to the formation of planets are still not well understood. But thanks to the high number of known exoplanets, it is now possible to look at them as a…
Meteorites trace planet formation in the Sun's protoplanetary disk, but they also record the influence of the Sun's birth environment. Whether the Sun formed in a region like Taurus-Auriga with ~10^2 stars, or a region like the Carina…
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…
Exoplanet surveys have confirmed one of humanity's (and all teenagers') worst fears: we are weird. If our Solar System were observed with present-day Earth technology -- to put our system and exoplanets on the same footing -- Jupiter is the…
The fates of planetary systems provide unassailable insights into their formation and represent rich cross-disciplinary dynamical laboratories. Mounting observations of post-main-sequence planetary systems necessitate a complementary level…
Giant impacts refer to collisions between two objects each of which is massive enough to be considered at least a planetary embryo. The putative collision suffered by the proto-Earth that created the Moon is a prime example, though most…
Current models of chemical evolution during star and planetary formation rely on the presence of dust grains to act as a third body. However, they generally ignore the reactivity of the dust grains themselves. Dust grains present in the…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
Complex organics are now commonly found in meteorites, comets, asteroids, planetary satellites, and interplanetary dust particles. The chemical composition and possible origin of these organics are presented. Specifically, we discuss the…
Exocomets are small bodies releasing gas and dust which orbit stars other than the Sun. Their existence was first inferred from the detection of variable absorption features in stellar spectra in the late 1980s using spectroscopy. More…
Protoplanetary disks are quasi-steady structures whose evolution and dispersal determine the environment for planet formation. I review the theory of protoplanetary disk evolution and its connection to observations. Substantial progress has…
In this chapter, we explore the origins of cometary material and discuss the clues cometary composition provides in the context of the origin of our solar system. The review focuses on both cometary refractory and volatile materials, which…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
We describe how meteors recorded at the Earth can be used to partly reconstruct the meteoroid environments of the planets if a large sample (i.e. millions of orbits at a minimum) is available. The process involves selecting from the…
Meteor showers on the Earth occur at well known times, and are associated with the decay of comets or other minor bodies whose orbital paths pass close to the Earth's trajectory. On the surface, determining the closest proximity of two…
The ultimate goal of exoplanetologists is to discover life outside our Earth and to fully understand our place in the Universe. Even though we have never been closer to attaining this goal, we still need to understand how and where the…