Related papers: Carbon from Interstellar Clouds to Habitable World…
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…
The compositions of planet-forming disks are set by a combination of material inherited from the interstellar medium and material reprocessed during disk formation and evolution. Indeed, comets and primitive meteorites exhibit…
In protoplanetary disks, small mm-cm-sized pebbles drift inwards which can aid planetary growth and influence the chemical composition of their natal disks. Gaps in protoplanetary disks can hinder the effective inward transport of pebbles…
Given the central role of carbon in the chemistry of life, it is a fundamental question as to how carbon is supplied to the Earth, in what form and when. We provide an accounting of carbon found in solar system bodies, in particular a…
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…
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…
The proportions of oxygen, carbon and major rock-forming elements (e.g. Mg, Fe, Si) determine a planet's dominant mineralogy. Variation in a planet's mineralogy subsequently affects planetary mantle dynamics as well as any deep water or…
Extensive photometric stellar surveys show that many main sequence stars show emission at infrared and longer wavelengths that is in excess of the stellar photosphere; this emission is thought to arise from circumstellar dust. The presence…
We use the C/N ratio as a monitor of the delivery of key ingredients of life to nascent terrestrial worlds. Total elemental C and N contents, and their ratio, are examined for the interstellar medium, comets, chondritic meteorites and…
Knowledge of the composition of material that will form planets is crucial to understand planetary diversity and the occurrence of potentially habitable planets. Ultimately, it is the chemistry in circumstellar disks that determines the…
The solid content of circumstellar disks is inherited from the interstellar medium: dust particles of at most a micrometer in size. Protoplanetary disks are the environment where these dust grains need to grow at least 13 orders of…
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…
Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…
Whether binaries can harbor potentially habitable planets depends on several factors including the physical properties and the orbital characteristics of the binary system. While the former determines the location of the habitable zone…
The formation of planetesimals is a necessary step in the formation of planets. While several mechanisms have been proposed, a local dust-to-gas ratio above unity is a strong requirement to trigger the collapse of pebble clouds into…
The breadth of topics that encompass the search for life has expanded and evolved significantly since the emergence of the field of astrobiology. Initial astrobiology centered investigations focused on detecting biosignatures in the Martian…
Protoplanetary discs are dynamic environments where the interplay between chemical processes and mass transport shapes the composition of gas and dust available for planet formation. We investigate the combined effects of volatile chemistry…
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…
The elemental composition of the gas and dust in a protoplanetary disk influences the compositions of the planets that form in it. We use the Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales (MAPS) data to constrain the elemental composition of…
Organic molecules are widely present in the dense interstellar medium, and many have been synthesized in the laboratory on Earth under the conditions typical for an interstellar environment. Until now, however, only relatively small…