Planetary formation in protostellar disks

Recent discoveries of planets around other stars suggest that planets are ubiquitous and their dynamical properties are diverse. We reviewed the formation mechanism for protoplanets and the post-formation planet-disk tidal interaction which may have led the short-period planets to their present configuration. We suggest that these planets may be the survivors of a populations of similar planets which have plunged into and contaminated the stellar convection zone. In the context of the solar system, the mass of the giant planets and the present distribution of the minor planets may be used to infer the structure and evolution for the primordial solar nebula. The large eccentricity of 70 Vir and HD 114762 may be due to cohesive collisions in planetary systems which become unstable during their long term orbital evolution.