planetesimals

Over time, this aggregated into tiny bodies called planetesimals, like dinky asteroids.

WordPress.com News 2008

This total melting of the planet-forming chunks of rock, called planetesimals, caused their constituents to separate out, with lighter materials including silicates floating to the surface and eventually forming a crust, while heavier iron-rich material sank down to the core, where it began swirling around to produce a magnetic dynamo.

YubaNet.com 2008

Whatever part of the primitive bolt escaped and scattered was drawn out into independent orbits round the sun, forming the "planetesimals" which behave like minute planets.

The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) A Plain Story Simply Told J. Arthur Thomson 1897

For those of you scoring at home, "planetesimals" were the first solid objects in our newly minted solar system (also known as the protoplanetary disk).

News and Features - NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory 2009

Since such dusts must be continually replenished, they are generally assumed to be the collisional fragments of residual planetesimals analogous to the Kuiper Belt objects.

Planet-x.com.au » Dusty Disks around White Dwarfs I: Origin of Debris Disks … 2010

In other words, these molecules hang around until the formation of planetesimals and planets, and this mechanism could have been guarded the constituents of life from the ravages of the Sun in our own Solar System.

How Water Protected Our Molecules | Universe Today 2010

We estimate formation rates of planetesimals and assess the conditions needed to match estimates of both asteroid and Kuiper Belt Object KBO formation rates.

Planet-x.com.au » Towards Initial Mass Functions for Asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects 2010

Once these objects were more than a half-mile wide, gravity superseded chance accretion, electrostatic attraction, and drag, thereby speeding up formation of the planetesimals.

‘The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars' 2009

Eventually, bodies of several kilometers in diameter formed; these are known as planetesimals.

AP Environmental Science Chapter 3- The Solid Earth 2008

The largest planetesimals grew fastest, at the expense of the smaller ones.

AP Environmental Science Chapter 3- The Solid Earth 2008