Related papers: Metal-silicate mixing in planetesimal collisions
We present a framework to study regolith segregation on rubble-pile asteroids (self-gravitating granular aggregates) due to seismic shaking induced by impacts sustained during their lifetimes. We first relate the amplitude and frequency of…
Chemical and chronological information preserved in meteorites permits the reconstruction of events and processes in the solar nebula from the formation of the first solids to the accretion of planetary bodies and their subsequent…
The Earth's Moon is thought to have formed by an impact between the Earth and an impactor around 4.5 billion years ago. This impact could have been so energetic that it could have mixed and homogenized the Earth's mantle. However, this view…
Impactors of different types and sizes can produce a final crater of the same diameter on a planet under certain conditions. We derive the condition for such "isocrater impacts" from scaling laws, as well as relations that describe how the…
The formation of planetesimals was an integral part of the cascading series of processes that built the terrestrial planets. To illuminate planetesimal formation, here we develop a refined thermal evolution model to calculate the formation…
The Earth was born in violence. Many giant collisions of protoplanets are thought to have occurred during the terrestrial planet formation. Here we investigated the giant impact stage by using a hybrid code that consistently deals with the…
Our understanding of Solar System evolution is closely tied to interpretations of asteroid composition, particularly the M-class asteroids. These asteroids were initially thought to be the exposed cores of differentiated planetesimals, a…
Overabundances in highly siderophile elements (HSEs) of Earth's mantle can be explained by conveyance from a singular, immense (3000 km in a diameter) "Late Veneer" impactor of chondritic composition, subsequent to lunar formation and…
Current protoplanetary dust coagulation theory does not predict dry silicate planetesimals, in tension with the Earth. While remedies to this predicament have been proposed, they have generally failed numerical studies, or are in tension…
Craters formed by the impact of agglomerated materials are commonly observed in nature, such as asteroids colliding with planets and moons. In this paper, we investigate how the projectile spin and cohesion lead to different crater shapes.…
The photospheres of stars hosting planets have larger metallicity than stars lacking planets. In the present work we study the possibility of an earlier metal enrichment of the photospheres by means of impacting planetesimals during the…
Small asteroids intersecting Earth's orbit can deliver extraterrestrial rocks to the Earth, called meteorites. This process is accompanied by a luminous phenomena in the atmosphere, called bolides or fireballs. Observations of bolides…
Impacts play a fundamental role in shaping the physical and chemical properties of the objects in our Solar System. Given the challenges in replicating such collisions through laboratory experiments, computer simulations are an important…
Given the compositional diversity of asteroids, and their distribution in space, it is impossible to consider returning samples from each one to establish their origin. However, the velocity and molecular composition of primary minerals,…
A hypothesis based on observational and theoretical results on the origin of C-type asteroids and carbonaceous chondrites is proposed. Asteroids of C-type and close BGF-types could form from hydrated silicate-organic matter accumulated in…
We investigate equilibrium chemistry between molten metal and silicate, and a hydrogen-rich envelope using 18 independent reactions among 25 phase components for sub-Neptune-like exoplanets. Both reactive metal and unreactive metal…
The formation of the Earth's core is a consequence of planetary accretion and processes in the Earth's interior. The mechanical process of planetary differentiation is likely to occur in large, if not global, magma oceans created by the…
The chemical composition of a planetary body reflects its starting conditions modified by numerous processes during its formation and geological evolution. Measurements by X-ray, gamma-ray, and neutron spectrometers on the MESSENGER…
Many of the planets discovered by the Kepler satellite are close orbiting Super-Earths or Mini-Neptunes. Such objects exhibit a wide spread of densities for similar masses. One possible explanation for this density spread is giant…
In circumstellar discs, collisional grinding of planetesimals produces second-generation dust. While it remains unclear whether this ever becomes a major component of the total dust content, the presence of such dust, and potentially the…