Related papers: Triton and Pluto: same origin but separated at bir…
Atmospheric compositions preserve the history of planet formation processes. Jupiter has the remarkable feature of being uniformly enriched in various elements compared to the Sun, including highly volatile elements such as nitrogen and…
The sample of known exoplanets is strongly biased to masses larger than the ones of the giant gaseous planets of the solar system. Recently, the discovery of two extrasolar planets of considerably lower masses around the nearby stars GJ 436…
Metal-rich asteroids and iron meteorites are considered core remnants of differentiated planetesimals and or products of oxygen-depleted accretion. Investigating the origins of iron-rich planetesimals could provide key insights into planet…
Planets intermediate in size between the Earth and Neptune, and orbiting closer to their host stars than Mercury does the Sun, are the most common type of planet revealed by exoplanet surveys over the last quarter century. Results from…
Chemical and chronological information preserved in meteorites permits the reconstruction of events and processes in the solar nebula from the formation of the first solids to the accretion of planetary bodies and their subsequent…
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…
The wealth of observational data about Jupiter and Saturn provides strong constraints to guide our understanding of the formation of giant planets. The size of the core and the total amount of heavy elements in the envelope have been…
Composition of terrestrial planets records planetary accretion, core-mantle and crust-mantle differentiation, and surface processes. Here we compare the compositional models of Earth and Mars to reveal their characteristics and formation…
Endogenous or exogenous, dry or wet, various scenarios have been so far depicted for the origin of water on our Solar Systems rocky bodies. Hydrated silicates found in meteorites and in interplanetary dust particles together with…
Comets are believed to be born in the outer Solar System where the temperature is assumed to have never exceeded T ~ 100 K. Surprisingly, observations and samples of cometary dust particles returned to Earth showed that they are in fact…
Some large trans-Neptunian objects could be formed by the compression of rarefied dust condensations, but not by the accumulation of smaller planetesimals. A considerable portion of near-Earth objects could have come from the…
Interstellar comets offer direct samples of volatiles from distant protoplanetary disks. 2I/Borisov is the first notably active interstellar comet discovered in our solar system[1]. Comets are condensed samples of the gas, ice, and dust…
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…
The nature of the first generation of stars in the Universe remains largely unknown. Observations imply the existence of massive primordial stars early in the history of the universe, and the standard theory for the growth of cosmic…
Uranus and Neptune form a distinct class of planets in our solar system. Given this fact, and ubiquity of similar-mass planets in other planetary systems, it is essential to understand their interior structure and composition. However,…
A high fraction of carbon bound in solid carbonaceous material is observed to exist in bodies formed in the cold outskirts of the solar nebula, while bodies in the terrestrial planets region contain nearly none. We study the fate of the…
In the laboratory, the photo-and thermochemical evolution of ices, made of simple molecules of astrophysical relevance, always leads to the formation of semi-refractory water-soluble organic residues. Targeted searches for specific…
Formation and evolution of water in the Solar System and the origin of water on Earth constitute one of the most interesting questions in astronomy. The prevailing hypothesis for the origin of water on Earth is by delivery through…
The origin of the terrestrial atmosphere is one of the most puzzling enigmas in the planetary sciences. It is suggested here that two sources contributed to its formation, fractionated nebular gases and accreted cometary volatiles. During…
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…