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

Dominik Hezel is a cosmochemist and meteoriticist with an additional expertise in data science. His research focus is the origin, formation, and processing of the first solids in the early solar system, and the distribution of meteorite components in the protoplanetary disk. He develops data science and AI tools, and maintained MetBase for many years, before it merged with Astromaterials. Dominik studied at the Universität Heidelberg (Germany), received his doctoral degree from the Universität zu Köln (Germany), was a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in London (UK), and is now a staff scientist at the Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main (Germany).

Herbert Palme studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna. After his PhD at the Institut für Radiumforschung und Kernphysik with Prof. Berta Karlik, he moved to Mainz to take a post-doc position with Heinrich Wänke at the Cosmochemistry Department of the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie. From 1976 to 1977 he spent a year with Ed Anders at the University of Chicago. In 1984 he did his habilitation for mineralogy at the University of Mainz. From 1994 to 2008 Herbert Palme was professor of mineralogy and geochemistry at the University of Cologne. After his retirement he became honorary collaborator at the Senckenberg Museum and Research Institution in Frankfurt.

Klaus Mezger is a petrologist and geochemist with particular expertise in isotope geo- and cosmochemistry. His research focus is on the chemical evolution of the Earth with a focus on the formation of ancient continental crust, and chemical processes in the early Solar system from the formation of the first solids to the accretion and differentiation of planetesimals and planets. He received his doctoral degree from Stony Brook University (USA), was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan (USA), staff scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry (Germany) and professor at the University of Münster (Germany), before joining the faculty at the University of Bern (Switzerland) as professor of Isotope Geology.

Alessandro Morbidelli received the Master in Physics at the University of Milan (Italy) in 1988, and the Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Namur (Belgium) in 1991. In 1993 he obtained a CNRS permanent position at the observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice and in 2023 he was elected Professor at Collège de France in Paris. He is an expert of the formation and dynamical evolution of our Solar system. including giant planet formation and orbital migration, the effect of giant planets on the circulation of dust in the disk, planetesimal formation, terrestrial planet formation etc.Morbidelli has been the recipient of the Urey prize of the Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society in 2000 and the bronze and silver medal of CNRS in 1995 and 2019.

Jutta Zipfel is a petrologist and cosmochemist with broad expertise in meteorites. Her research focus is on the formation conditions of primitive materials in the early solar system and on processes related to accretion and differentiation of asteroidal bodies. She received her doctoral degree from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany), was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego (USA), staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Germany) before becoming section leader and curator of the meteorite collection at Senckenberg – Leibniz Institution for Biodiversity and Earth System Research (Germany). Since 2023 she is serving as secretary of the Meteoritical Society.