Related papers: The energy budgets of giant impacts
Planets are expected to conclude their growth through a series of giant impacts: energetic, global events that significantly alter planetary composition and evolution. Computer models and theory have elucidated the diverse outcomes of giant…
Quantifying the energy budget of Earth in the first few million years following the Moon-forming giant impact is vital to understanding Earth's initial thermal state and the dynamics of lunar tidal evolution. After the impact, the body was…
In the leading theory of lunar formation, known as the giant impact hypothesis, a collision between two planet-size objects resulted in a young Earth surrounded by a circumplanetary debris disk from which the Moon later accreted. The range…
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…
In the leading theory of lunar formation, known as the giant impact hypothesis, a collision between two planet-size objects resulted in a young Earth surrounded by a circumplanetary debris disk from which the Moon later accreted. The range…
The late stages of terrestrial planet formation are dominated by giant impacts that collectively influence the growth, composition and habitability of any planets that form. Hitherto, numerical models designed to explore these late stage…
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…
Giant impacts refer to collisions between two objects each of which is massive enough to be considered at least a planetary embryo. The putative collision suffered by the proto-Earth that created the Moon is a prime example, though most…
The Giant Impact is currently accepted as the leading theory for the formation of Earth's Moon. Successful scenarios for lunar origin should be able to explain the chemical composition of the Moon (volatile content and stable isotope…
Giant impacts, the collisions between planetary embryos, play a crucial role in sculpting the planets and their orbital architectures. Numerical simulations have advanced our understanding of these events, enabling estimations of mass and…
In the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, planets are predicted to undergo pairwise collisions known as giant impacts. Here we present a high-resolution database of giant impacts for differentiated colliding bodies of iron-silicate…
Head-on giant impacts (collisions between planet-size bodies) are frequently used to study the planet formation process as they present an extreme configuration where the two colliding bodies are greatly disturbed. With limited computing…
During the formation of rocky planets, the surface environments of growing protoplanets were dramatically different from those of present-day planets. The release of gravitational energy during accretion would have maintained a molten…
Most of the properties of the Earth-Moon system can be explained by a collision between a planetary embryo and the growing Earth late in the accretion process. Simulations show that most of the material that eventually aggregates to form…
Numerical simulations of the stochastic end stage of planet formation typically begin with a population of embryos and planetesimals that grow into planets by merging. We analyzed the impact parameters of collisions leading to the growth of…
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…
The giant impact hypothesis is the dominant theory of how the Earth-Moon system was formed. Models have been created that can produce a disk of debris with the proper mass and composition to create our Moon. Models have also been created…
The Earth-Moon system is suggested to have formed through a single giant collision, in which the Moon accreted from the impact-generated debris disk. However, such giant impacts are rare, and during its evolution the Earth experienced many…
The Moon is believed to have formed in the aftermath of a giant impact between a planetary mass body and the proto-Earth. In a typical giant impact scenario, a disk of vapor, liquid, and solid debris forms around the proto-Earth and--after…
The classical scenario of terrestrial planet formation is characterized by a phase of giant impacts among Moon-to-Mars mass planetary embryos. While the classic model and its adaptations have produced adequate analogs of the outer three…