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A few planetesimals may have been captured as moons, such as Phoebe (a moon of Saturn) and many other small high-inclination moons of the giant planets. Planetesimals that have survived to the current day are valuable to science because they contain information about the formation of the Solar System. Although their exteriors are subjected to ...
These planetesimals then scattered off the next planet they encountered in a similar manner, moving the planets' orbits outwards while they moved inwards. [3] This process continued until the planetesimals interacted with Jupiter, whose immense gravity sent them into highly elliptical orbits or even ejected them outright from the Solar System.
This orbiting material would cool and condense into numerous small bodies that they termed planetesimals and a few larger protoplanets. Their theory proposed that as these objects collided over time, the planets and their moons were built up, with comets and asteroids being the leftover debris.
The objects formed by accretion are called planetesimals—they act as seeds for planet formation. Initially, planetesimals were closely packed. They coalesced into larger objects, forming clumps up to a few kilometers across in a few million years, a small time in comparison to the age of the Solar System. [3]
A planetesimal is an object formed from dust, rock, and other materials, measuring from meters to hundreds of kilometers in size. According to the Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis and the theories of Viktor Safronov, a protoplanetary disk of materials such as gas and dust would orbit a star early in the formation of a planetary system.
Giant planets can significantly influence terrestrial planet formation. The presence of giants tends to increase eccentricities and inclinations (see Kozai mechanism) of planetesimals and embryos in the terrestrial planet region (inside 4 AU in the Solar System). [62] [66] If giant planets form too early, they can slow or prevent inner planet ...
For a single planet system, planetesimals can only be lost (a sink) due to their ejection, which would cause the planet to migrate inward. In multiple planet systems the other planets can act as sinks or sources. Planetesimals can be removed from the planet's influence after encountering an adjacent planet or transferred to that planet's influence.
A circumstellar disc (or circumstellar disk) is a torus, pancake or ring-shaped accretion disk of matter composed of gas, dust, planetesimals, asteroids, or collision fragments in orbit around a star. Around the youngest stars, they are the reservoirs of material out of which planets may form.