St Cross Junior Research Fellow Dr Tim Lichtenberg, Postdoctoral Fellow within the Department of Physics, is the lead author of a new paper published in Science explaining the development of a new theory to explain how our Solar System developed as the result of formation in two distinct episodes.
The paper presents a new theoretical framework for the formation and structure of the Solar System which can explain several key features of the terrestrial planets, outer Solar System, and the composition of asteroids and meteorite families. The team's work builds on recent observations of other solar systems during their formation, and the analysis of the isotope, iron, and water content of meteorites.
Tim was part of an international research team combining researchers from the University of Oxford, LMU Munich, ETH Zurich, BGI Bayreuth and the University of Zurich, and they were supported by funding from the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the European Research Council.
You can watch Tim introducing the paper's theory here, and a more detailed video is available here. You can read the full paper here.
Header image: Mark A. Garlick