Related papers: Silicate Melting and Vaporization during Rocky Pla…
Giant impacts dominate the late stages of accretion of rocky planets. They contribute to the heating, melting, and sometimes vaporizing of the bodies involved in the impacts. Due to fractionation during melting and vaporization,…
Volatility-dependent fractionation of the rock-forming elements at high temperatures is an early, widespread process during formation of the earliest solids in protoplanetary disks. Equilibrium condensation calculations allow prediction of…
Collisional growth of dust occurs in all regions of protoplanetary disks with certain materials dominating between various condensation lines. The sticking properties of the prevalent dust species depend on the specific temperatures. The…
The luminosity of young giant planets can inform about their formation and accretion history. The directly imaged planets detected so far are consistent with the "hot-start" scenario of high entropy and luminosity. If nebular gas passes…
To investigate impact vaporization for planetary atmosphere formation, we have studied the thermodynamic state generated by the shock wave due to a high-velocity impact, called the shock field. We have carried out iSALE simulations for…
Silicon and Mg in differentiated rocky bodies exhibit heavy isotope enrichments that have been attributed to evaporation of partially or entirely molten planetesimals. We evaluate the mechanisms of planetesimal evaporation in the early…
Currently, there are about 3 dozen known super-Earth (M < 10 MEarth), of which 8 are transiting planets suitable for atmospheric follow-up observations. Some of the planets are exposed to extreme temperatures as they orbit close to their…
Rocky planet atmospheres form and evolve through interactions between the planet's surface and interior. If a growing rocky planet acquires enough mass prior to the dissipation of the nebular gas disk, it can gravitationally capture a…
Planetisimals are thought to be formed from the solid material of a protoplanetary disk by a process of dust aggregation. It is not known how growth proceeds to kilometre sizes, but it has been proposed that water ice beyond the snowline…
We discuss major challenges in modeling giant impacts between planetary bodies, focusing on the equations of state (EOS). During the giant impact stage of planet formation, rocky planets are melted and partially vaporized. However, most EOS…
Extensive experimental studies show all major rocky elements (Si, Mg, Fe, Ni, Ca, Al, Na, K) dissolve in steam to a greater or lesser extent. We use these results to compute chemical equilibrium abundances of rocky element-bearing gases in…
We provide estimates of volcanism versus time for planets with Earth-like composition and masses from 0.25 to 25 times Earth, as a step toward predicting atmospheric mass on extrasolar rocky planets. Volcanism requires melting of the…
Impacts between planetesimals have largely been ruled out as a heat source in the early Solar System, by calculations that show them to be an inefficient heat source and unlikely to cause global heating. However, the long-term, localized…
A giant planet embedded in a protoplanetary disk excites spiral density waves, which steepen into shocks as they propagate away from the planet. These shocks lead to secular disk heating and gap opening, both of which can have important…
Because of the high energies involved, giant impacts that occur during planetary accretion cause large degrees of melting. The depth of melting in the target body after each collision determines the pressure and temperature conditions of…
During the final stage of planetary formation, different formation pathways of planetary embryos could significantly influence the observed variations in planetary densities. Of the approximately 5,000 exoplanets identified to date, a…
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…
We found evidence for critical internal heat values during significant geophysical transitions in the inner solar system planetary bodies in association with volcanism. From a simple rocky planet thermal evolution model, we could infer…
Coagulation of dust particles in protoplanetary disks is the first step on the journey to the formation of planets. The surface free energy (SFE) of the dust particles determines the effectiveness of particles sticking to each other after…
Silicate vapors play a key role in planetary evolution, especially dominating early stages of rocky planet formation through outgassed magma ocean atmospheres. Our open-source thermodynamic modeling software "VapoRock" combines the MELTS…