Astro and Planetary Science

Planetary science reconstructs how the Sun's family of worlds came to be, by measuring the chemical and isotopic fingerprints preserved in meteorites, comets, asteroids, and the planets themselves. Because chondritic meteorites retain material from the solar nebula largely unchanged, they serve as a kind of chemical baseline against which the compositions of Earth, the giant planets, and small bodies can be compared to trace the sequence and timing of formation events. Active areas of investigation include pinning down the absolute chronology of planetary accretion and differentiation, understanding why the inner and outer Solar System differ so sharply in composition, and interpreting the organic-rich plumes erupting from moons like Enceladus as possible windows into subsurface chemistry. Whether the building blocks that delivered water and organics to the terrestrial planets came primarily from asteroid-belt material, comets, or the outer disk remains an open and vigorously debated question.

Works

320,178

Total citations

2,842,351

Keywords

Solar System AbundancesTerrestrial PlanetsGiant PlanetsCometary CompositionAsteroid TaxonomyPlanetary Chronology