Building the Solar System

Catalog description

In this First-Year Seminar we will explore the ingredients, processes, and timescales for building a planetary system like our own – the Solar System. This course provides an introduction to meteorites, and how we can decipher their compositional (i.e., petrographic, chemical, and isotopic) code in order to obtain direct insights into the earliest stages of the Solar System. By integrating such cosmochemical data with theoretical models and astronomical observations, the students will learn about the current understanding of key aspects of the Solar System’s evolution; such as, the sources of its building materials, the processes of planet formation, and the origin of Earth’s habitability. Furthermore, we will discuss the cultural importance of meteorites as well as the specifics of the Solar System compared to exoplanetary systems.