During the past twenty-five years, space probes have enabled astronomers to learn more about the planets than in the previous forty centuries. Les Enfants du Soleil reviews the present state of scientific knowledge about the solar system for the non-specialist reader. The author addresses three main areas. First of all, he tries to determine how the human mind, in its insatiable search for the origins of life, has succeeded in finding out all that is now known about the solar system, and how explanations of the workings of the solar system have changed and evolved over the years. The second issue concerns the upheavals undergone by scientific theories and paradigms as a result of new observations made over the centuries – and especially during the past decades of space exploration. The third issue concerns current explanations proffered by astronomers to explain the origins of the solar system. In less than a century, scientists have acquired enough information to try to explain the origin of life, to realise that there may be other life forms in the universe, and to begin to understand the birth of our planet and its future. André Brahic writes about the planets, the stars and the universe without forgetting the role played by human beings – who are themselves made from solar atoms and are thus truly "children of the sun".

André Brahic, an astronomer, is known for discovering the rings of Neptune.