Related papers: Quantization of Masses in the Solar System
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 widespread prevalence of close-in, nearly coplanar super-Earth- and sub-Neptune-sized planets in multiple-planet systems was one of the most surprising results from the Kepler mission. By studying a uniform sample of Kepler "multis"…
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…
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…
Giant planet formation process is still not completely understood. The current most accepted paradigm, the core instability model, explains several observed properties of the solar system's giant planets but, to date, has faced difficulties…
We have studied planetary systems which are similar to the Solar System and built up from three inner rocky planets (Venus, Earth, Mars) and two outer gas giants. The stability of the orbits of the inner planets is discussed in the cases of…
Review of the history of solar system elemental abundances with a new assessment of elemental and isotopic abundances from CI-chondrites and solar data. Solar elemental abundances, or solar system elemental abundances refer to the…
We compile a systematic mass inventory of the Solar System excluding the Sun, drawing on spacecraft measurements, planetary ephemerides, and population surveys of small-body populations including main-belt asteroids and trans-Neptunian…
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,…
With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…
Giant planets dominate the mass of many planetary systems, including the Solar System, and represent the best-characterized class of extrasolar planets. Understanding the formation of giant planets bridges the high mass end of the planet…
It is likely that multiple bodies with masses between those of Mars and Earth ("planetary embryos") formed in the outer planetesimal disk of the solar system. Some of these were likely scattered by the giant planets into orbits with…
Despite great advances in our understanding of the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of the Earth, and the chemical basis for life, we are not much closer than the ancient Greeks to an answer of whether life has arisen and…
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…
A relationship between the average orbital radii of the planets and their satellites in the solar system and the spectra of atomic and molecular hydrogen is identified and investigated. In this model, stimulated radiative association…
Classical analytic theories of the solar system indicate that it is stable, but numerical integrations suggest that it is chaotic. This disagreement is resolved by a new analytic theory. The theory shows that the chaos among the Jovian…
Giant planets acquire gas, ices and rocks during the early formation stages of planetary systems and thus inform us on the formation process itself. Proceeding from inside out, examining the connections between the deep interiors and the…
A large sample of planet-planet scattering events for three planet systems with different orbital separations and masses is analyzed with a multiple regression model. The dependence of the time for the onset of instability on the masses of…
The origin of Mars's small moons, Phobos and Deimos, remains unknown. They are typically thought either to be captured asteroids or to have accreted from a debris disk produced by a giant impact. Here, we present an alternative scenario…
The terrestrial planets formed by accretion of asteroid-like objects within the inner solar system's protoplanetary disk. Previous works have found that forming a small-mass Mars requires the disk to contain little mass beyond ~1.5 au…