Evolution of the Solar System: Constraints from Meteorites

This essential collection from leading experts in the field of early solar system sciences and astrophysics provides a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of how planetary systems form, and in particular how our solar system formed.

Our knowledge about solar system evolution is based on a broad foundation of chemical and isotope data from meteorites and their components such as Ca,Al-rich inclusions, chondrules, matrix, and presolar grains, as well as from astromaterials of sample return missions, and modelling accretion processes. The chapters in this volume present the latest data and modelling results from cosmochemistry and astrophysics, and discuss their implications for early solar system evolution from the earliest solids formed in the protoplanetary disk, all the way to accretion and differentiation of planetesimals and planet formation. The importance of past, current, and future space missions is highlighted in this context.

The volume is aimed at researchers and advanced students in the field of meteoritics, cosmochemistry, astrophysics, and planetary sciences. Often, the articles take controversial views into account, rather than promoting individual views.

Reprinted from Space Science Reviews , Topical Collection: Evolution of the Solar System: Constraints from Meteorites