The terrestrial planets in our Solar System pose several paradoxes. For example, despite being the product of repeated high-velocity collisions between Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos, the terrestrial planets have relatively low eccentricities and inclinations. As the Earth was forming, the solar nebula in its vicinity was too hot for ice to condense, yet the Earth today has abundant water. New, high-resolution N-body simulations that I have performed have begun to resolve many of these issues. Dynamical friction from a large population of small planetesimals is able to damp the eccentricities and inclinations of the growing planets, and a sufficient amount of water-bearing material from the outer asteroid belt is delivered to the Earth to explain its current water budget. Analyzing these simulations in the context of geochemical and meteoritic evidence shows that this scenario is consistent with Earth’s Deuterium/Hydrogen (D/H) ratio and the abundances and isotop
ic ratios of siderophile elements such as Osmium in the Earth’s mantle. The remnant planetesimal population beyond Mars is consistent with the mass and orbital distribution of the present asteroid belt. I will give a summary of this work, and discuss how lessons learned from such detailed modeling of our Solar System can be applied towards better understanding the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets around other stars. Integrating dynamical models of terrestrial planet formation with chemical models of the condensation of solids in protoplanetary nebulae around other stars, many of which are chemically different from our Sun, allows for the prediction (in a statistical sense) of both the chemical and dynamical properties of terrestrial planets that may exist in those systems. I will present results for several extrasolar planetary systems, and discuss the diversity of possible extrasolar terrestrial planets, from those that are “Earth-like” to planets that may
be very different than those in our Solar System