Related papers: EL meteorites do date the giant planet instability
The asteroid Athor, residing today in the inner main asteroid belt, has been recently associated as the source of EL enstatite meteorites to Earth. It has been argued that Athor formed in the terrestrial region -- as indicated by similarity…
Giant planet migration appears widespread among planetary systems in our Galaxy. However, the timescales of this process, which reflect the underlying dynamical mechanisms, are not well constrained, even within the solar system. Since…
The dynamical architecture and compositional diversity of the asteroid belt strongly constrain planet formation models. Recent Solar System formation models have shown that the asteroid belt may have been born empty and later filled with…
The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…
It is generally accepted today that our solar system has undergone a phase during which the orbits of the giant planets became very unstable. In recent years, many studies have identified traces of this event and have provided reasonable…
Peak temperatures inside meteorite parent bodies are closely linked to accretion times. Most iron meteorites come from bodies that accreted <0.5 Myr after CAIs formed and were melted by 26Al and 60Fe, probably inside 2 AU. Chondrite groups…
Immediately after their formation, the terrestrial planets experienced intense impact bombardment by comets, leftover planetesimals from primary accretion, and asteroids. This temporal interval in solar system evolution, termed late…
Advances in computing power and numerical methodologies over the past several decades sparked a prolific output of dynamical investigations of the late stages of terrestrial planet formation. Among other peculiar inner solar system…
The impact cratering record of the Moon and the terrestrial planets provides important clues about the formation and evolution of the Solar System. Especially intriguing is the epoch 3.8-3.9 Gyr ago (Ga), known as the Late Heavy Bombardment…
Modern studies of the early solar system routinely invoke the possibility of an orbital instability among the giant planets triggered by gravitational interactions between the planets and a massive exterior disk of planetesimals. Previous…
In their model for the origin of the parent bodies of iron meteorites, Bottke et al proposed differentiated planetesimals that were formed in the region of 1-2 AU during the first 1.5 Myr, as the parent bodies, and suggested that these…
Asteroid families are groups of minor bodies produced by high-velocity collisions. After the initial dispersions of the parent bodies fragments, their orbits evolve because of several gravitational and non-gravitational effects,such as…
Containing only a few percent the mass of the moon, the current asteroid belt is around three to four orders of magnitude smaller that its primordial mass inferred from disk models. Yet dynamical studies have shown that the asteroid belt…
Recent models of solar system formation suggest that a dynamical instability among the giant planets happened within the first 100 Myr after disk dispersal, perhaps before the Moon-forming impact. As a direct consequence, a bombardment of…
The process leading to the formation of the terrestrial planet remains elusive. In a previous publication, we have shown that, if the first generation of planetesimals forms in a ring at about 1 AU and the gas disk's density peaks at the…
The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…
A large disruption in the main asteroid belt can cause a large flux, an "asteroid shower", on the terrestrial planets. We quantitatively examine the hypothesis that such an event was the cause of the lunar late heavy bombardment (LHB). We…
An instability among the giant planets' orbits can match many aspects of the Solar System's current orbital architecture. We explore the possibility that this dynamical instability was triggered by the close passage of a star or substellar…
The orbital structure of the asteroid belt holds a record of the Solar System's dynamical history. The current belt only contains ${\rm \sim 10^{-3}}$ Earth masses yet the asteroids' orbits are dynamically excited, with a large spread in…
We have developed a statistical framework that uses collisional evolution models, shock physics modeling and scaling laws to determine the range of plausible collisional histories for individual meteorite parent bodies. It is likely that…