Related papers: Minor planets, asteroids, comets and interplanetar…
We update our analysis of recent exoplanet data that gives us a partial answer to the question: How does our Solar System compare to the other planetary systems in the Universe? Exoplanets detected between January and August 2002 strengthen…
Over the past 10 years abundant evidence has emerged that many (if not all) stars are born with circumstellar disks. Understanding the evolution of post-accretion disks can provide strong constraints on theories of planet formation and…
The Sun is just one of a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Our front-row seat on Earth allows us to observe it in much greater detail than we can for other stars. However, those observations provide only one snapshot in the…
The triple asteroids and triple Kuiper belt objects (collectively called the triple minor planets) in the Solar system are of particular interest to the scientific community since the discovery of the first triple asteroid system in 2004.…
Dust is a key component of the Universe, especially regarding galaxies evolution, playing an essential role for both the physics and chemistry of the interstellar medium. In this paper, we give a brief review of interstellar dust. We…
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…
A review of the abundances and condensation temperatures of the elements and their nuclides in the solar nebula and in chondritic meteorites. Abundances of the elements in some neighboring stars are also discussed.
The solar system has changed dramatically since its birth, and so did our understanding of it. A considerable research effort has been invested in the past decade in an attempt to reconstruct the solar system history, including the earliest…
The development of our understanding of the gaseous component of the interstellar medium is reviewed. During the 20th century our picture of diffuse material in space has grown from a simple model of isolated clouds in thermal equilibrium…
The formation of planets is one of the major unsolved problems in modern astrophysics. Planets are believed to form out of the material in circumstellar disks known to exist around young stars, and which are a by-product of the star…
Planet formation encompasses processes that span a remarkable 40 magnitudes in mass, ranging from collisions between micron-sized grains inherited from the ISM to the accretion of gas by giant planets. The planet formation process takes…
Infrared studies have revealed debris likely related to planet formation in orbit around ~30% of youthful, intermediate mass, main sequence stars. We present evidence, based on atmospheric pollution by various elements heavier than helium,…
Most stars form in star clusters and stellar associated. To understand the roles of star cluster environments in shaping the dynamical evolution of planetary systems, we carry out direct $N$-body simulations of four planetary systems models…
The Sun likely formed as part of a group of stars. A close stellar flyby by one of the solar siblings is probably responsible for the sharp outer edge in the solar system`s mass distribution. The frequency of such close flybys can be used…
Debris disks are tenuous, dust-dominated disks commonly observed around stars over a wide range of ages. Those around main sequence stars are analogous to the Solar System's Kuiper Belt and Zodiacal light. The dust in debris disks is…
Almost all the planets of our solar system have moons. Each planetary system has however unique characteristics. The Martian system has not one single big moon like the Earth, not tens of moons of various sizes like for the giant planets,…
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…
Two fundamentally different processes of rocky planet formation exist, but it is unclear which one built the terrestrial planets of the solar system. Either they formed by collisions among planetary embryos from the inner solar system, or…
In this chapter we review the astrophysical origins of Earth's carbon, starting from the products of the Big Bang and culminating with the Earth's formation. We review the measured compositions of different primitive objects including…
We are observing, thanks to ALMA, the dust distribution in the region of active planet formation around young stars. This is a powerful tool to connect observations with theoretical models and improve our understandings of the processes at…