Accurate and quantitative modeling of the formation of terrestrial planet and the origin of Earth's water
- Author(s)
- Nader Haghighipour, Thomas I. Maindl
- Abstract
It is widely accepted that collisions among planetary embryos is the key process in the formation of terrestrial planets and transport of water and volatiles to their accretion zones. Unfortunately, due to computational limitations, these collisions are often treated in a rudimentary way where impacts are considered to be perfectly in elasticand water to be fully transferred from one object to the other. This perfect-merging assumption has profound effects on the mass andc omposition of final planetary bodies as it grossly overestimates their masses and water contents. It also entirely neglects collisional-loss of volatiles and draws an unrealistic connection between these properties and the chemical structure of the protoplanetary disk. We have developed a comprehensive methodology and a self-consistent approach to modeling the formation of terrestrial planets and origin of Earth's water where we simulate collisions directly, and for the first time, consider the loss of water due to the heat of the impact, mass-removal during collisions, and ice-sublimation during orbital evolution of bodies. Using a combination of SPH and N-body codes, we model the collisions and growth of embryos to planetary bodies, and account for the loss of water and volatiles during impacts. Results of our simulations indicate that 1) traditional N-body modeling of terrestrial planet formation overestimates the amount of the mass and water contents of the final planets by over 60% implying that 2) not only is the amount of water they suggest, far from being realistic, 3) small planets such as Mars can also form in these simulations when collisions are treated properly. Results also suggest that because of the loss of water during impacts, the initial water contents of planetesimals and planetary embryos in the protoplanetary disk have to be higher than their traditional values in order for the water contents of the final planets to be comparable with that of Earth. We will discuss details of our methodology and present its results and implications.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Astrophysics
- External organisation(s)
- University of Hawaii
- Pages
- 90-92
- Publication date
- 06-2019
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103003 Astronomy, 103004 Astrophysics
- Keywords
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/980271f9-a4e0-4fa1-852f-2c0ba73a0a82