Half the known extrasolar planets have orbital eccentricities in excess of 0.3. Such large eccentricities are surprising as it is thought that planets form in a protoplanetary disk on nearly circular orbits much like the current states of the solar system planets. Possible explanations for the large planetary eccentricities include the perturbations that accompany planet-planet scattering, the tidal interaction between the gas disk and the planets, Kozai's secular eccentricity cycles, the eccentricity excitation during planetary pair migration in mean motion resonance, the perturbations by stellar encounters, stellar-like relaxation that occurs if planets formed through gravitational instability, and the relative acceleration by the stellar jet system of the host star with respect to the companion. In this chapter, we comment on the relevance and characteristics of the various eccentricity origin theories.

In the standard formation models of terrestrial planets in the solar system and close-in super-Earths in nonresonant orbits recently discovered by exoplanet observations, planets are formed by giant impacts of protoplanets or planetary embryos after the dispersal of protoplanetary disk gas in the final stage. This study aims to theoretically clarify a fundamental scaling law for the orbital architecture of planetary systems formed by giant impacts. In the giant impact stage, protoplanets gravitationally scatter and collide with one another to form planets. Using N -body simulations, we investigate the orbital architecture of planetary systems formed from protoplanet systems by giant impacts. As the orbital architecture parameters, we focus on the mean orbital separation between two adjacent planets and the mean orbital eccentricity of planets in a planetary system. We find that the orbital architecture is determined by the ratio of the two-body surface escape velocity of planets v _esc to the Keplerian circular velocity v _K , k = v _esc / v _K . The mean orbital separation and eccentricity are about 2 ka and 0.3 k , respectively, where a is the system semimajor axis. With this scaling, the orbital architecture parameters of planetary systems are nearly independent of their total mass and semimajor axis.

The orbital parameters of the observed extrasolar planets differ strongly from those of our own solar system. The differences include planets with high masses, small semi-major axis and large eccentricities. We performed numerical computations of embedded planets in disks and follow their mass growth and orbital evolution over several thousand periods. We find that planets do migrate inwards on timescales of about $10^5$ years on nearly circular orbits, during which they may grow up to about 5 Jupiter masses. The interaction of the disk with several planets may halt the migration process and lead to a system similar to the solar planetary system.

The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and coplanar orbits. We demonstrate that a single encounter with a 2–50 Jupiter-mass object, passing through the solar system at a perihelion distance less than 20 AU and a hyperbolic excess velocity of 1–3 km/s, can excite the giant planets’ eccentricities and mutual inclinations to values comparable to those observed. We describe a metric to evaluate how closely a simulated flyby system matches the eccentricity and inclination secular modes of the solar system. We estimate that there is about a 1-in-9000 chance that such a flyby occurs during the solar system’s residence in its primordial cluster and produces a dynamical architecture similar to that of the solar system. The scenario of an ancient close encounter with a substellar object offers a plausible explanation for the origin of the moderate eccentricities and inclinations and the secular architecture of the planets. We discuss some broader implications of disruptive flyby encounters on planetary systems in the Galaxy.

This article reviews the early history of our solar system from an astrobiological perspective and presents evidence from meteorites and astronomical observations. The purpose is to trace the formation of key molecules that participated in the building blocks of life. The Sun and its planetary system started from a section of a molecular cloud that collapsed into a protoplanetary disk. In the center of the protoplanetary disk, the protosun heated the surrounding material. The dust and gas inherited from the cloud remained pristine farther away from the protostar, while new compounds were created in the gas and on the icy mantles of the dust. The dust accreted into pebbles, pebbles formed planetesimals, and planetesimals collided and accreted pebbles to create planets. Meanwhile, the protosun became the Sun when its core reached the pressure and temperature required to transform hydrogen into helium. During this process, the Sun emitted high-energy radiation and particles that impacted the chemistry in the disk and the early evolution of the terrestrial planets.

Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons The formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed. This model, known as the nebular hypothesis, w The formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed. This model, known as the nebular hypothesis, was first developed in the 18th century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Its subsequent development has interwoven a variety of scientific disciplines including astronomy, chemistry, geology, physics, and planetary science. Since the dawn of the Space Age in the 1950s and the discovery of exoplanets in the 1990s, the model has been both challenged and refined to account for new observations. The Solar System has evolved considerably since its initial formation. Many moons have formed from circling discs of gas and dust around their parent planets, while other moons are thought to have formed independently and later to have been captured by their planets. Still others, such as Earth's Moon, may be the result of giant collisions. Collisions between bodies have occurred continually up to the present day and have been central to the evolution of the Solar System. Beyond Neptune, many sub-planet sized objects formed. Several thousand trans-Neptunian objects have been observed. Unlike the planets, these trans-Neptunian objects mostly move on eccentric orbits, inclined to the plane of the planets. The positions of the planets might have shifted due to gravitational interactions. The process of planetary migration explains parts of the Solar System's current structure. In roughly five billion years, the Sun's surface will cool as the fusion of hydrogen to helium stops in the core of the Sun, becoming a subgiant, and over the next two and a half to three billion years thereafter, it will expand outward to many times its current diameter, becoming a red giant twice with an intermittent phase between the principal RGB and AGB phases, before casting off its outer layers as a planetary nebula and leaving behind a stellar remnant known as a white dwarf.…