Building Terrestrial Planets

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 models with geochemical, cosmochemical and chronological constraints, in order to outline a comprehensive scenario of the early evolution of our Solar System.

Given that the giant planets formed first in the protoplanetary disk, we stress the sensitive dependence of the terrestrial planet accretion process on the orbital architecture of the giant planets and on their evolution. This suggests a great diversity among the terrestrial planets populations in extrasolar systems. Issues such as the cause for the different masses and accretion timescales between Mars and the Earth and the origin of water (and other volatiles) on our planet are discussed at depth.

Alessandro Morbidelli, Jonathan I. Lunine, David P. O`brien, Sean N. Raymond, Kevin J. Walsh
(Submitted on 23 Aug 2012)

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Journal reference: Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences, vol. 40, issue 1, pp. 251-275 (2012)
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-earth-042711-105319
Cite as: arXiv:1208.4694v1 [astro-ph.EP]
Submission history
From: Alessandro Morbidelli [view email]
[v1] Thu, 23 Aug 2012 09:01:55 GMT (861kb)