Related papers: Forming Mercury by Giant Impacts
Mercury's high uncompressed mass density suggests that the planet is largely composed of iron, either bound within metal (mainly Fe-Ni), or iron sulfide. Recent results from the MESSENGER mission to Mercury imply a low temperature history…
A giant impact is commonly thought to explain the dramatic contrast in elevation and crustal thickness between the two hemispheres of Mars known as the "Martian Dichotomy". Initially, this scenario referred to an impact in the northern…
We study the evolution of debris created in the giant impacts expected during the final stages of terrestrial planet formation. The starting point is the debris created in a simulation of the Moon-forming impact. The dynamical evolution is…
The correlation between stellar metallicity and the presence of giant planets is well established. It has been tentatively explained by the possible increase of planet formation probability in stellar disks with enhanced amount of metals.…
At the final stage of terrestrial planet formation, known as the giant impact stage, a few tens of Mars-sized protoplanets collide with one another to form terrestrial planets. Almost all previous studies on the orbital and accretional…
Pressure is a key parameter in the physics and chemistry of planet formation and evolution. Previous studies have erroneously assumed that internal pressures monotonically increase with the mass of a body. Using smoothed particle…
The role of stellar metallicity in shaping planetary systems is central to our understanding of planet formation. While the core accretion paradigm is widely accepted as the dominant mechanism for forming low- and intermediate-mass planets,…
Planets and stars are expected to be compositionally linked because they accrete from the same material reservoir. However, astronomical observations revealed the existence of exoplanets whose bulk density is far higher than what is…
Impacts may have had a significant effect on the atmospheric chemistry of the early Earth. Reduced phases in the impactor (e.g., metallic iron) can reduce the planet's H$_2$O inventory to produce massive atmospheres rich in H$_2$. Whilst…
The paper discusses a model of the bombardment of the Earth and the Moon by small bodies when these planets were formed. It is shown that the total ice mass delivered with the bodies to the Earth from the feeding zone of the giant planets…
Large impacts onto young rocky planets may transform their compositions, creating highly reducing conditions at their surfaces and reintroducing highly siderophile metals to their mantles. Key to these processes is the availability of an…
The leading hypothesis for the origin of the Moon, that of a single giant impact, faces significant challenges. These include either the need for an impactor with a near-identical composition to Earth or an extremely high-mass or…
The inner part of protoplanetary disks can be threaded by strong magnetic fields. In laboratory levitation experiments, we study how magnetic fields up to 7 mT influence the aggregation of dust by observing the self-consistent collisional…
The origin of rings around giant planets remains elusive. Saturn's rings are massive and made of 90-95% of water ice. In contrast, the much less massive rings of Uranus and Neptune are dark and likely to have higher rock fraction. Here we…
Much of the Earth was built by high-energy impacts of planetesimals and embryos, many of these impactors already differentiated, with metallic cores of their own. Geochemical data provide critical information on the timing of accretion and…
The formation of Uranus' regular moons has been suggested to be linked to the origin of its enormous spin axial tilt (~98^o). A giant impact between proto-Uranus and a 2-3 M_Earth impactor could lead to a large tilt and to the formation of…
The Moon is generally thought to have formed from the debris ejected by the impact of a planet-sized object with the proto-Earth towards the end of planetary accretion. Modeling of the impact process predicts that the lunar material was…
Simulations of the moon-forming impact suggest that most of the lunar material derives from the impactor rather than the Earth. Measurements of lunar samples, however, reveal an oxygen isotope composition that is indistinguishable from…
The absence of planets interior to Mercury continues to puzzle terrestrial planet formation models, particularly when contrasted with the relatively high derived occurrence rates of short-period planets around Sun-like stars. Recent work…
Water-rich super-Earth exoplanets are expected to be common. We explore the effect of late giant impacts on the final bulk abundance of water in such planets. We present the results from smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of…