Related papers: How special is the Solar System?
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…
Planetary systems have their origin in the gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. Through a process of accretion, is formed a massive star and a disk of planetesimals orbiting the star. Using a formalism analogous to quantum…
This paper reviews our current understanding of terrestrial planets formation. The focus is on computer simulations of the dynamical aspects of the accretion process. Throughout the chapter, we combine the results of these theoretical…
The Earth's comparatively massive moon, formed via a giant impact on the proto-Earth, has played an important role in the development of life on our planet, both in the history and strength of the ocean tides and in stabilizing the chaotic…
Recent discoveries of strongly misaligned transiting exoplanets pose a challenge to the established planet formation theory which assumes planetary systems to form and evolve in isolation. However, the fact that the majority of stars…
The known extrasolar planets exhibit many interesting and surprising features--extremely short-period orbits, high-eccentricity orbits, mean-motion and secular resonances, etc.--and have dramatically expanded our appreciation of the…
Morbidelli, Kleine & Nimmo (2024) (MKN) recently published a critical analysis on whether the terrestrial planets in the Solar System formed by rapid pebble accretion or by the classical route of multiple giant impacts between planetary…
Models of planet formation are mainly focused on the accretion and dynamical processes of the planets, neglecting their chemical composition. In this work, we calculate the condensation sequence of the different chemical elements for a…
The past decade has seen major progress in our understanding of terrestrial planet formation. Yet key questions remain. In this review we first address the growth of 100 km-scale planetesimals as a consequence of dust coagulation and…
As part of a national scientific network 'Pathways to Habitability' the formation of planets and the delivery of water onto these planets is a key question as water is essential for the development of life. In the first part of the paper we…
Over the past two decades, large strides have been made in the field of planet formation. Yet fundamental questions remain. Here we review our state of understanding of five fundamental bottlenecks in planet formation. These are: 1) the…
As of today over 40 planetary systems have been discovered in binary star systems. In all cases the configuration appears to be circumstellar, where the planets orbit around one of the stars, the secondary acting as a perturber. The…
About half of all known stellar systems with Sun-like stars consist of two or more stars, significantly affecting the orbital stability of any planet in these systems. Here we study the onset of instability for an Earth-type planet that is…
Understanding the Moon's formation mechanism is necessary for studying not only the Moon itself, but also the evolution, formation, habitability, and structure of other planets and the moons in the Solar system and in extrasolar planetary…
Extrasolar planetary host stars are enriched in key planet-building elements. These enrichments have the potential to drastically alter the building blocks available for terrestrial planet formation. Here we report on the combination of…
Since the discovery of the first extra-solar planets, we are confronted with the puzzling diversity of planetary systems. Processes like planet radial migration in gas-disks and planetary orbital instabilities, often invoked to explain the…
Our Solar System includes the Sun, eight major planets and their moons, along with numerous asteroids, comets, and dust particles, collectively known as the small Solar System bodies. Small bodies are relics from the birth of the Solar…
The growth and composition of Earth is a direct consequence of planet formation throughout the Solar System. We discuss the known history of the Solar System, the proposed stages of growth and how the early stages of planet formation may be…
The majority of stars form in star clusters and many are thought to have planetary companions. We demonstrate that multi-planet systems are prone to instabilities as a result of frequent stellar encounters in these star clusters much more…
The great diversity of the thousands of planets known to date is proof of the multitude of ways in which formation and evolution processes can shape the life of planetary systems. Multiple formation and evolution paths, however, can result…