Building Terrestrial Planets

By A. Morbidelli, Jonathan I. Lunine, David P. O'Brien, S. Raymond, Kevin J. Walsh. 2012

426 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article reviews our current understanding of terrestrial planet formation. The focus is on computer simulations of the dynamical aspects of the accretion process. Throughout the review, we combine the results of these theoretical models with geochemical, cosmochemical, and chronological constraints 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 planet populations in extrasolar systems. Issues such as the cause for the different masses and accretion timescales between Mars and Earth and the origin of water (and other volatiles) on our planet are discussed in depth.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fc0708d75eaf245ab2310fddefa1b6bcbd4ac97a

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Citations in the corpus

Formation of planetary systems by pebble accretion and migration (2018, background): “Such an embryo configuration has previously been proposed to explain the origin of Mars as a stranded embryo (Hansen 2009; Raymond et al. 2009; Walsh et al. 2011; Morbidelli et al. 2012; Jacobson & Morbidelli 2014; Walsh & Levison 2016).”
THE IMPRINT OF EXOPLANET FORMATION HISTORY ON OBSERVABLE PRESENT-DAY SPECTRA OF HOT JUPITERS (2016, background): “This is interesting because the formation location of carbonaceous chondrites, ordinary chondrites and enstatite chondrites is stated to be at ∼2.75 AU, ∼2.15 AU and ∼1.75 AU, respectively (Morbidelli et al. 2012).”
Water in the Moon's interior: Truth and consequences (2015, background): “At the same time, planetary accretion models indicate that fully formed planets are likely to have suffered multiple giant impacts (Agnor et al., 1999; Chambers, 2004; Morbidelli et al., 2012; Genda et al., 2012).”
Origin and evolution of the atmospheres of early Venus, Earth and Mars (2018, background): “If so, both planets may have obtained their final masses after the evaporation of the gas disk from further collisions with planetesimals and planetary embryos within the first 100 Myr (e.g. Kokubo and Ida 2000; Raymond et al. 2004, 2009, 2014; Lunine et al. 2011; Walsh et al. 2011; Morbidelli et al”
Water delivery and giant impacts in the 'Grand Tack' scenario (2014, positive): “The accretion of the terrestrial planets, however, did not finish until much later, around 30–100 Myr (Raymond et al., 2006, 2009; Bromley and Kenyon, 2006; O’Brien et al., 2006; Kleine et al., 2009; Morbidelli et al., 2012).”
Hints for a Turnover at the Snow Line in the Giant Planet Occurrence Rate (2018, background): “In addition, GPs affect the delivery of water to terrestrial planets (e.g., Morbidelli et al. 2012), a key ingredient for the development of life as we know it.”
Accretion and differentiation of the terrestrial planets with implications for the compositions of early-formed Solar System bodies and accretion of water (2014, methodology): “Each simulation run is integrated with Symba (Duncan et al., 1998) tracking both embryos, which interact with all particles in the simulation, and planetesimals, which interact only with the Sun, embryos and the giant planets (for a review of similar simulations see Morbidelli et al., 2012).”
Populating the asteroid belt from two parent source regions due to the migration of giant planets—“The Grand Tack” (2012, background): “It is in the following 30– 100 Myr that the terrestrial planets finished accreting (Kenyon and Bromley 2006; Kleine et al. 2009; also see Morbidelli et al. 2012), and approximately 400–600 Myr later that the orbits of the giant planets experienced an instability that resulted in the restructuring…”
The habitability of Proxima Centauri b. I. Irradiation, rotation and volatile inventory from formation to the present (2016, background): “Models of terrestrial planet formation (see Morbidelli et al. 2012; Raymond et al. 2014, for recent reviews) propose that Earth’s water was delivered by impacts from primordial C-type bodies.”
About 30% of Sun-like Stars Have Kepler-like Planetary Systems: A Study of Their Intrinsic Architecture (2018, result): “It is important to note, however, that the higher-mass Kepler systems are typically thought to form in a substantially shorter amount of time (prior to the dispersal of the natal disk) as compared to the Solar system terrestrial planets (Morbidelli et al. 2012; Chiang & Laughlin 2013).”