Related papers: Protoplanetary cores drove chondrule formation
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…
A fundamental, unsolved problem in Solar System formation is explaining the melting and crystallization of chondrules found in chondritic meteorites. Theoretical models of chondrule melting in nebular shocks has been shown to be consistent…
Compound chondrules, i.e. chondrules fused together, make a powerful probe of the density and compositional diversity in chondrule-forming environments, but their abundance among the dominating porphyritic textures may have been drastically…
It has been suggested that shock waves in the solar nebula formed the high temperature materials observed in meteorites and comets. It is shown that the temperatures at the inner rim of the solar nebula could have been high enough over a…
In view of the many recent observations conducted by ALMA and SPHERE, it is becoming clear that protoplanetary disks form planets in narrow annular gaps at various distances from the central protostars before these protostars are actually…
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…
Low-mass protostars form from condensations inside molecular clouds when gravity overwhelms thermal and magnetic supporting forces. The first phases of the formation of a solar-type star are characterized by dramatic changes not only in the…
Stars like our Sun and planets like our Earth form in dense regions within interstellar molecular clouds, called pre-stellar cores (PSCs). PSCs provide the initial conditions in the process of star and planet formation. In the past 15…
Chondrules are millimeter sized objects of spherical to irregular shape that constitute the major component of chondritic meteorites that originate in the region between Mars and Jupiter and which fall to Earth. They appear to have…
Volatiles are compounds with low sublimation temperatures, and they make up most of the condensible mass in typical planet-forming environments. They consist of relatively small, often hydrogenated, molecules based on the abundant elements…
Observations of protoplanetary discs have revealed dust rings which are likely due to the presence of pressure bumps in the disc. Because these structures tend to trap drifting pebbles, it has been proposed that pressure bumps may play an…
Turbulence, self-gravity, and cooling convert most of the interstellar medium into cloudy structures that form stars. Turbulence compresses the gas into clouds directly and it moves pre-existing clouds around passively when there are…
Massive stars form in clusters within self-gravitating molecular clouds. The size scale of these clusters is sufficiently large that non-thermal, or turbulent, motions of the gas must be taken into account when considering their formation.…
After reviewing the difficulties faced by the conventional theory of planet formation (based upon the aggregation of microscopic dust particles), we describe an alternative hypothesis. We propose that planets form by gravitational collapse…
Chondritic meteorites constitute the most ancient rock record available in the laboratory to study the formation of the solar system and its planets. Detailed investigations of their mineralogy, petrography, chemistry and isotopic…
The discovery of young globular clusters in merging galaxies and other environments provides an opportunity to study directly the process of globular cluster formation. Empirically it appears that globular cluster formation occurs…
Planetary systems are born in the disks of gas, dust and rocky fragments that surround newly formed stars. Solid content assembles into ever-larger rocky fragments that eventually become planetary embryos. These then continue their growth…
Star clusters form in dense, hierarchically collapsing gas clouds. Bulk kinetic energy is transformed to turbulence with stars forming from cores fed by filaments. In the most compact regions, stellar feedback is least effective in removing…
We obtained mid-infrared spectra of chondrules, matrix, CAIs and bulk material from primitive type 1-4 chondrites in order to compare them with the dust material in young, forming solar systems and around comets. Our aim is to investigate…
Chondrules are millimeter-sized spherules that dominate primitive meteorites (chondrites) originating from the asteroid belt. The incorporation of chondrules into asteroidal bodies must be an important step in planet formation, but the…