scholarly journals Aluminum-26 chronology of dust coagulation and early solar system evolution

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. eaaw3350 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.-C. Liu ◽  
J. Han ◽  
A. J. Brearley ◽  
A. T. Hertwig

Dust condensation and coagulation in the early solar system are the first steps toward forming the terrestrial planets, but the time scales of these processes remain poorly constrained. Through isotopic analysis of small Ca-Al–rich inclusions (CAIs) (30 to 100 μm in size) found in one of the most pristine chondrites, Allan Hills A77307 (CO3.0), for the short-lived 26Al-26Mg [t1/2 = 0.72 million years (Ma)] system, we have identified two main populations of samples characterized by well-defined 26Al/27Al = 5.40 (±0.13) × 10−5 and 4.89 (±0.10) × 10−5. The result of the first population suggests a 50,000-year time scale between the condensation of micrometer-sized dust and formation of inclusions tens of micrometers in size. The 100,000-year time gap calculated from the above two 26Al/27Al ratios could also represent the duration for the Sun being a class I source.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (42) ◽  
pp. eaay2724
Author(s):  
Alexander N. Krot ◽  
Kazuhide Nagashima ◽  
James R. Lyons ◽  
Jeong-Eun Lee ◽  
Martin Bizzarro

The Sun is 16O-enriched (Δ17O = −28.4 ± 3.6‰) relative to the terrestrial planets, asteroids, and chondrules (−7‰ < Δ17O < 3‰). Ca,Al-rich inclusions (CAIs), the oldest Solar System solids, approach the Sun’s Δ17O. Ultraviolet CO self-shielding resulting in formation of 16O-rich CO and 17,18O-enriched water is the currently favored mechanism invoked to explain the observed range of Δ17O. However, the location of CO self-shielding (molecular cloud or protoplanetary disk) remains unknown. Here we show that CAIs with predominantly low (26Al/27Al)0, <5 × 10−6, exhibit a large inter-CAI range of Δ17O, from −40‰ to −5‰. In contrast, CAIs with the canonical (26Al/27Al)0 of ~5 × 10−5 from unmetamorphosed carbonaceous chondrites have a limited range of Δ17O, −24 ± 2‰. Because CAIs with low (26Al/27Al)0 are thought to have predated the canonical CAIs and formed within first 10,000–20,000 years of the Solar System evolution, these observations suggest oxygen isotopic heterogeneity in the early solar system was inherited from the protosolar molecular cloud.


Elements ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 231-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles K. Shearer ◽  
Steven B. Simon

The behavior of boron during the early evolution of the Solar System provides the foundation for how boron reservoirs become established in terrestrial planets. The abundance of boron in the Sun is depleted relative to adjacent light elements, a result of thermal nuclear reactions that destroy boron atoms. Extant boron was primarily generated by spallation reactions. In the initial materials condensing from the solar nebula, boron was predominantly incorporated into plagioclase. Boron abundances in the terrestrial planets exhibit variability, as illustrated by B/Be. During planetary formation and differentiation, boron is redistributed by fluids at low temperature and during crystallization of magma oceans at high temperature.


Conditions that could have applied in the environments of the major planets when they were forming make it possible that the present icy mantles of the larger satellites were then oceans and vapour atmospheres encasing silicate—ferrous cores. The major constituents are explored by comparison with the present atmospheres of the terrestrial planets. It is further suggested that the primary condensations during the formation of the Solar System were the Sun and the major planets, and that the terrestrial planets and satellites were a secondary formation. Some observational data are offered in support of the arguments and future tests are suggested.


1974 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 475-481
Author(s):  
H. C. Urey

Objects of the solar system, in addition to the Sun, can be classified into four groups -the planets, objects of lunar mass, smaller objects of variable mass and the comets.If the solar proportion of gases relative to non-volatile compounds of the variety in the terrestrial planets, namely about 300 times the mass of these elements, were added to the terrestrial planets, they would have masses comparable to those of the major planets. Mercury is low in mass but has a high density, indicating that it has lost several times its mass of silicate materials relative to high density metallic iron. If this were restored and then the component of gases were added, it would also fall into the group rather naturally. Mars appears to be rather small. Uranus and Neptune have rather high densities indicating some loss of gases, probably hydrogen and helium. When we attempt to estimate the mass of primitive solar material from which the planets were evolved, we conclude that they evolved from very similar masses. Later, I shall argue that the process was a very inefficient one.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth P. Tito ◽  
Vadim I. Pavlov

Why is it that in the neighborhood of a calm ordinary star (the Sun) located at the quiet periphery of its galaxy (the Milky Way), non-native heavy elements are abundant in such concentrated form? Where did these elements really come from? Where did Earth's gold come from? Our analysis of the known data offers a fact-reconciling hypothesis: What if, in the early solar system, an explosive collision occurred -- of a traveling from afar giant-nuclear-drop-like object with a local massive dense object (perhaps a then-existent companion of the Sun) -- and the debris, through the multitude of reaction channels and nuclei transformations, was then responsible for (1) the enrichment of the solar system with the cocktail of all detected exogenous chemical elements, and (2) the eventual formation of the terrestrial planets that pre-collision did not exist, thus offering a possible explanation for their inner position and compositional differences within the predominantly hydrogen-helium rest of the solar system.


Author(s):  
D.E. Brownlee ◽  
A.L. Albee

Comets are primitive, kilometer-sized bodies that formed in the outer regions of the solar system. Composed of ice and dust, comets are generally believed to be relic building blocks of the outer solar system that have been preserved at cryogenic temperatures since the formation of the Sun and planets. The analysis of cometary material is particularly important because the properties of cometary material provide direct information on the processes and environments that formed and influenced solid matter both in the early solar system and in the interstellar environments that preceded it.The first direct analyses of proven comet dust were made during the Soviet and European spacecraft encounters with Comet Halley in 1986. These missions carried time-of-flight mass spectrometers that measured mass spectra of individual micron and smaller particles. The Halley measurements were semi-quantitative but they showed that comet dust is a complex fine-grained mixture of silicates and organic material. A full understanding of comet dust will require detailed morphological, mineralogical, elemental and isotopic analysis at the finest possible scale. Electron microscopy and related microbeam techniques will play key roles in the analysis. The present and future of electron microscopy of comet samples involves laboratory study of micrometeorites collected in the stratosphere, in-situ SEM analysis of particles collected at a comet and laboratory study of samples collected from a comet and returned to the Earth for detailed study.


In most discussions of the formation of the Solar System, the early Sun is assumed to have possessed the bulk of the angular momentum of the system, and a closely surrounding disc of gas was spun out, which, through magnetic coupling, acquired a progressively larger proportion of the total angular momentum. There are difficulties with this model in accounting for the inclined axis of the Sun, the magnitude of the magnetic coupling required, and the nucleogenetic variations recently observed in the Solar System. Another possibility exists, namely that of a slowly contracting disc of interstellar material, leading to the formation of both a central star and a protoplanetary disc. In this model one can better account for the tilt of the Sun’s axis and the lack of mixing necessary to account for the nucleogenetic evidence. The low angular momentum of the Sun and of other low mass stars is then seen as resulting from a slow build-up as a degenerate dwarf, acquiring orbital material at a low specific angular momentum. When the internal temperature reaches the threshold for hydrogen burning, the star expands to the Main Sequence and is now a slow rotator. More massive stars would spin quickly because they had to acquire orbiting material after the expansion, and therefore at a high specific angular momentum. A process of gradual inward spiralling may also allow materials derived from different sources to accumulate into solid bodies, and be placed on a great variety of orbits in the outer reaches of the system, setting up the cometary cloud of uneven nucleogenetic composition.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (14) ◽  
pp. 4214-4217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantin Batygin ◽  
Greg Laughlin

The statistics of extrasolar planetary systems indicate that the default mode of planet formation generates planets with orbital periods shorter than 100 days and masses substantially exceeding that of the Earth. When viewed in this context, the Solar System is unusual. Here, we present simulations which show that a popular formation scenario for Jupiter and Saturn, in which Jupiter migrates inward from a > 5 astronomical units (AU) to a ≈ 1.5 AU before reversing direction, can explain the low overall mass of the Solar System’s terrestrial planets, as well as the absence of planets with a < 0.4 AU. Jupiter’s inward migration entrained s ≳ 10−100 km planetesimals into low-order mean motion resonances, shepherding and exciting their orbits. The resulting collisional cascade generated a planetesimal disk that, evolving under gas drag, would have driven any preexisting short-period planets into the Sun. In this scenario, the Solar System’s terrestrial planets formed from gas-starved mass-depleted debris that remained after the primary period of dynamical evolution.


Author(s):  
Mario Trieloff

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Planetary Science. Please check back later for the full article.Although the second most abundant element in the cosmos is helium, noble gases are also called rare gases. The reason is that they are not abundant on terrestrial planets like our Earth, which is characterized by orders of magnitude depletion of—particularly light—noble gases when compared to the cosmic element abundance pattern. Indeed, such geochemical depletion and enrichment processes make noble gases so versatile concerning planetary formation and evolution: When our solar system formed, the first small grains started to adsorb small amounts of noble gases from the protosolar nebula, resulting in depletion of light He and Ne when compared to heavy noble gases Ar, Kr, and Xe: the so-called planetary type abundance pattern. Subsequent flash heating of the first small mm to cm-sized objects (chondrules and calcium, aluminum rich inclusions) resulted in further depletion, as well as heating—and occasionally differentiation—on small planetesimals, which were precursors of larger planets and which we still find in the asteroid belt today from where we get rocky fragments in form of meteorites. In most primitive meteorites, we even can find tiny rare grains that are older than our solar system and condensed billions of years ago in circumstellar atmospheres of, for example, red giant stars. These grains are characterized by nucleosynthetic anomalies and particularly identified by noble gases, for example, so-called s-process xenon.While planetesimals acquired a depleted noble gas component strongly fractionated in favor of heavy noble gases, the sun and also gas giants like Jupiter attracted a much larger amount of gas from the protosolar nebula by gravitational capture. This resulted in a cosmic or “solar type” abundance pattern, containing the full complement of light noble gases. Contrary to Jupiter or the sun, terrestrial planets accreted from planetesimals with only minor contributions from the protosolar nebula, which explains their high degree of depletion and basically “planetary” elemental abundance pattern. Indeed this depletion enables another tool to be applied in noble gas geo- and cosmochemistry: ingrowth of radiogenic nuclides. Due to heavy depletion of primordial nuclides like 36Ar and 130Xe, radiogenic ingrowth of 40Ar by 40K decay, 129Xe by 129I decay, or fission Xe from 238U or 244Pu decay are precisely measurable, and allow insight in the chronology of fractionation of lithophile parent nuclides and atmophile noble gas daughters, mainly caused by mantle degassing and formation of the atmosphere.Already the dominance of 40Ar in the terrestrial atmosphere allowed C. F v. Weizsäcker to conclude that most of the terrestrial atmosphere originated by degassing of the solid Earth, which is an ongoing process today at mid ocean ridges, where primordial helium leaves the lithosphere for the first time. Mantle degassing was much more massive in the past; in fact, most of the terrestrial atmosphere formed during the first 100 million years of Earth´s history, and was completed at about the same time when the terrestrial core formed and accretion was terminated by a giant impact that also formed our moon. However, before that time, somehow also tiny amounts of solar noble gases managed to find their way into the mantle, presumably by solar wind irradiation of small planetesimals or dust accreting to Earth. While the moon-forming impact likely dissipated the primordial atmosphere, today´s atmosphere originated by mantle degassing and a late veneer with asteroidal and possibly cometary contributions. As other atmophile elements behave similar to noble gases, they also trace the origin of major volatiles on Earth, for example, water, nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon.


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