The Formation of the Solar Systems: A Recipe for Worlds

This paper summarises the recipe – the raw and processed ingredients plus some of the processes – behind making our solar system 4,600 million years ago. Like a gourmand recipe, the solar system formed from many disparate ingredients, many of these ingredients themselves being the products of complex processes. Thus, to create the habitable solar system we see today required extensive work and processing. However, unlike a food recipe, much of how this happened is poorly understood, although a combination of new observations and analysis is ensuring that progress continues to be made.