Related papers: A Shocking Solar Nebula?
A fundamental, unsolved problem in Solar System formation is explaining the melting and crystallization of chondrules found in chondritic meteorites. Theoretical models of chondrule melting in nebular shocks has been shown to be consistent…
Lightning in the solar nebula is considered to be one of the probable sources for producing the chondrules that are found in meteorites. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) provide a large flux of gamma-rays that Compton scatter and create a charge…
Beneath the fusion-encrusted surfaces of the most primitive stony meteorites lies not homogeneous rock, but a profusion of millimeter-sized igneous spheres. These chondrules, and their centimeter-sized counterparts, the…
Hot temperature minerals have been detected in a large number of comets and were also identified in the samples of Comet Wild 2 that were returned by the Stardust mission. Meanwhile, observations of the distribution of hot minerals in young…
We assess whether chondrules, once-molten mm-sized spheres filling the oldest meteorites, could have formed from super-km/s collisions between planetesimals in the solar nebula. High-velocity collisions release hot and dense clouds of…
Meteorites, and in particular primitive meteorites (chondrites), are irreplaceable probes of the solar protoplanetary disk. We review their essential properties and endeavour to place them in astrophysical context. The earliest solar system…
Chondrules are millimeter-sized silicate spherules ubiquitous in primitive meteorites, but whose origin remains mysterious. One of the main proposed mechanisms for producing them is melting of solids in shock waves in the gaseous…
The formation of chondrules in the protoplanetary nebulae causes many questions concerning the formation process, the source of energy for melting the rims, and the composition of the origin material. The aim of this work is to explore the…
An intriguing aspect of chondritic meteorites is that they are complementary: while their separate components have wildly varying abundances, bulk chondrites have nearly solar composition. This implies that the nearly-solar reservoirs in…
The bulk volatile contents of chondritic meteorites provide clues to their origins. Matrix and chondrules carry differing abundances of moderately volatile elements, with chondrules carrying a refractory signature. At the high temperatures…
One of the fundamental astrobiology questions is how life has formed in our Solar System. In this context the formation and stability of abiotic organic molecules such as CH4, formic acid and amino acids, is important for understanding how…
Astronomical observations and isotopic measurements of meteorites suggest that substructures are common in protoplanetary disks and may even have existed in the solar nebula. Here, we conduct paleomagnetic measurements of chondrules in CO…
We study magnetic field steepening due to ambipolar diffusion (Brandenburg & Zweibel 1994) in protoplanetary disk environments and draw the following conclusions. Current sheets are generated in magnetically active regions of the disk where…
A summary is given of planetary nebulae abundances from ISO measurements. It is shown that these nebulae show abundance gradients (with galactocentric distance), which in the case of neon, argon, sulfur and oxygen (with four exceptions) are…
Inside carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are tiny dust particles which, when heated, release noble gases with an isotopic composition different from what is found anywhere else in the solar system. For this reason it is believed that these…
The dynamical state of the solar nebula depends critically upon whether or not the gas is magnetically coupled. The presence of a subthermal field will cause laminar flow to break down into turbulence. Magnetic coupling, in turn, depends…
Recent isotopic studies of Martian meteorites by Dauphas & Pourmond (2011) have established that large (~ 3000 km radius) planetary embryos existed in the solar nebula at the same time that chondrules - millimeter-sized igneous inclusions…
Several lines of evidence suggest that fine silicate crystals observed in primitive meteorite and interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) nucleated in a supersaturated silicate vapor followed by crystalline growth. We investigated evaporation…
Our Solar System originated in interstellar gas and dust; the latter is in the form of amorphous silicate particles and carbonaceous dust. The composition of cometary material shows that a significant fraction of the amorphous silicates was…
If Jupiter and the Sun both formed directly from the same well-mixed proto-solar nebula, then their atmospheric compositions should be similar. However, direct sampling of Jupiter's troposphere indicates that it is enriched in elements such…