Related papers: Mercury's Protoplanetary Mass
MESSENGER observations suggest a magma ocean formed on proto-Mercury, during which evaporation of metals and outgassing of C- and H-bearing volatiles produced an early atmosphere. Atmospheric escape subsequently occurred by plasma heating,…
Although petrologic, chemical and isotopic studies of ordinary chondrites and meteorites in general have largely helped establish a chronology of the earliest events of planetesimal formation and their evolution, there are several questions…
Theoretical studies of giant planet formation suggest that substantial quantities of metals - elements heavier than hydrogen and helium - can be delivered by solid accretion during the envelope-assembly phase. This metal enhancement process…
In the standard model for giant planet formation, the planetary growth begins with accretion of solids followed by a buildup of a gaseous atmosphere as more solids are accreted, and finally, by rapid accretion of gas. The interaction of the…
I present here a new, indivisible planetary science paradigm, a wholly self-consistent vision of the nature of matter in the Solar System, and dynamics and energy sources of planets. Massive-core planets formed by condensing and raining-out…
We have examined the fate of impact ejecta liberated from the surface of Mercury due to impacts by comets or asteroids, in order to study (1) meteorite transfer to Earth, and (2) re-accumulation of an expelled mantle in giant-impact…
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,…
Exoplanet discoveries of recent years have provided a great deal of new data for studying the bulk compositions of giant planets. Here we identify 47 transiting giant planets ($20 M_\oplus < M < 20 M_{\mathrm{J}}$) whose stellar insolation…
Chondrites are the likely building blocks of Earth, and identifying the group of chondrite that best represents Earth is a key to resolving the state of the early Earth. The origin of chondrites, however, remains controversial partly…
Knowledge of both the mass and radius of an exoplanet allows us to estimate its mean density, and therefore its composition. Exoplanets seem to fill a very large parameter space in terms of mass and composition, and unlike the…
Despite being all roughly of solar composition, primitive meteorites (chondrites) present a diversity in their chemical, isotopic and petrographic properties, and in particular a first-order dichotomy between carbonaceous and…
The timescales of accretion, core formation, and magmatic differentiation in planetary bodies can be constrained using extinct radionuclide systems. Experiments have shown that Ni becomes more siderophile with decreasing pressure, which is…
A circumsolar dust ring has been recently discovered close to the orbit of Mercury. There are currently no hypotheses for the origin of this ring in the literature, so we explore four different origin scenarios here: the dust originated…
The core-accretion and disk instability models have so far been used to explain planetary formation. These models have different conditions, such as planet mass, disk mass, and metallicity for formation of gas giants. The core-accretion…
The composition of Jupiter and the primordial distribution of the heavy elements are determined by its formation history. As a result, in order to constrain the primordial internal structure of Jupiter the growth of the core and the…
The Juno mission has provided an accurate determination of Jupiter's gravitational field, which has been used to obtain information about the planet's composition and internal structure. Several models of Jupiter's structure that fit the…
We calculate heavy element enrichment in a Jupiter-mass protoplanet formed by disk instability at various radial distances from the star, considering different disk masses and surface density distributions. Although the available mass for…
It is generally accepted that silicate-metal (`rocky') planet formation relies on coagulation from a mixture of sub-Mars sized planetary embryos and (smaller) planetesimals that dynamically emerge from the evolving circum-solar disc in the…
The planet Mercury possesses an anomalously large iron core, and a correspondingly high bulk density. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed in order to explain such a large iron content. A long-standing idea holds that Mercury once…
We present a series of papers dedicated to modelling the accretion and differentiation of rocky planets that form by pebble accretion within the lifetime of the protoplanetary disc. In this first paper, we focus on how the accreted ice…