The Origin of the Solar System

TL;DR

This paper explores the origins of our solar system by linking it to recent exoplanet discoveries, highlighting how new models of planetary formation explain features of both our solar system and diverse exoplanets.

Contribution

It introduces updated models of planetary formation that account for the diversity of exoplanets and their relevance to understanding our solar system's structure and composition.

Findings

Exoplanet diversity informs solar system formation models.

Models explain planetary masses and orbital distributions.

Insights into asteroid, comet origins, and Earth's water presence.

Abstract

This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy - the discovery some fifteen years ago of the first planets around other stars (exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own solar system, with its planets, planetary satellites, asteroids, and comets. The surprising diversity of exoplanets, of which more than 500 have already been discovered, has required new models to explain their formation and evolution. In turn, these models explain, rather naturally, a number of important features of our own solar system, amongst them the masses and orbits of the terrestrial and gas giant planets, the presence and distribution of asteroids and comets, the origin and impact cratering of the Moon, and the existence of water on Earth.