Formation and evolution of the Solar System

The formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed. This model, known as the nebular hypothesis, was first developed in the 18th century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Its subsequent development has interwoven a variety of scientific disciplines including astronomy, chemistry, geology, physics, and planetary science. Since the dawn of the Space Age in the 1950s and the discovery of exoplanets in the 1990s, the model has been both challenged and refined to account for new observations. The Solar System has evolved considerably since its initial formation. Many moons have formed from circling discs of gas and dust around their parent

Numerical studies on saturated kink and sawtooth induced fast ion transport in JET ITER-like plasmas

Mario Podesta, Matteo Vallar

This presentation examines the energetic particle transport induced by saturated kink modes and sawtooth crashes in JET deuterium plasmas. It is known that kink mode-resonant transport and phase-space redistribution from sawtooth crashes can drive strong fast ion transport with dependencies on particle pitch and energy. Measurements with JET's Faraday cup fast ion loss detector array have shown that the internal kink growth phase preceding sawtooth crashes produces substantial fast ion losses. This report will numerically investigate the dominant energetic particle transport mechanism with a detailed examination of the fast ion phase-space dependencies, resonances, orbit topology changes, induced losses, and redistribution associated with the long-lived, resonant, kink mode and non-resonant sawtooth crash. The ORBIT-kick model forms the basis of the transport studies with realistic fast ion distributions produced from TRANSP. A recently created reduced model for sawtooth induced transport is used while the saturated kink modes are modeled with ideal magnetohydrodynamic codes. The simulations were further validated against experiment with a newly developed synthetic Faraday cup fast ion loss detector in addition to scintillator probe and neutron measurements.

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

Extreme Deuterium Excesses in Ultracarbonaceous Micrometeorites from Central Antarctic Snow

Anders Meibom, François Robert

Primitive interplanetary dust is expected to contain the earliest solar system components, including minerals and organic matter. We have recovered, from central Antarctic snow, ultracarbonaceous micrometeorites whose organic matter contains extreme deuterium (D) excesses ( 10 to 30 times terrestrial values), extending over hundreds of square micrometers. We identified crystalline minerals embedded in the micrometeorite organic matter, which suggests that this organic matter reservoir could have formed within the solar system itself rather than having direct interstellar heritage. The high D/H ratios, the high organic matter content, and the associated minerals favor an origin from the cold regions of the protoplanetary disk. The masses of the particles range from a few tenths of a microgram to a few micrograms, exceeding by more than an order of magnitude those of the dust fragments from comet 81P/Wild 2 returned by the Stardust mission.

2010

Investigating Earth's Formation History Through Copper and Sulfur Metal-Silicate Partitioning During Core-Mantle Differentiation

James Badro

Identifying extant materials that act as compositional proxies for Earth is key to understanding its accretion. Copper and sulfur are both moderately volatile elements; however, they display different geochemical behavior (e.g., phase affinities). Thus, individually and together, these elements provide constraints on the source material and conditions of Earth's accretion, as well as on the timing and evolution of volatile delivery to Earth. Here we present laser-heated diamond anvil cell experiments at pressures up to 81 GPa and temperatures up to 4,100 K aimed at characterizing Cu metal-silicate partitioning at conditions relevant to core-mantle differentiation in Earth. Partitioning results have been combined with literature results for S in Earth formation modeling to constrain accretion scenarios that can arrive at present-day mantle Cu and S contents. These modeling results indicate that the distribution of Cu and S in Earth may be the result of accretion largely from material(s) with Cu contents at or above chondritic values and S contents that are strongly depleted, such as that in bulk CH chondrites, and that the majority of Earth's mass (similar to 3/4) accreted incrementally via pebble and/or planetesimal accretion. Plain Language Summary Experiments wherein molten metal and silicate (rock-building) phases unmix themselves due to their physical properties, that is, metal-silicate partitioning, can be conducted at the high temperatures and pressures (HP-HT) that characterized Earth's differentiation into a core and mantle. The redistribution of elements between the metal and silicate phases-their partitioning-during this process can be measured and mathematically described, then placed into numerical models to better understand Earth's formation history. Here we have mathematically characterized the HP-HT partitioning of copper, combined this with results for sulfur from literature, and input these characterizations into numerical models that track their distribution between Earth's core and mantle as it grows to its present mass. Copper and sulfur were chosen because they display different sensitivities to the physical mechanisms that govern planetary formation, and we can leverage this to better understand Earth's formation and differentiation history. Our results indicate that similar to 75% of Earth's precursor materials grew incrementally from relatively small bits of material-on average similar to 0.1% of Earth's mass or less-that is most compositionally similar to meteorite classes that are made up of iron-rich metal and silicate solids (chondrules) that are depleted in easily vaporized (volatile) elements, especially sulfur.

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2018

Investigating Earth's Formation History Through Copper and Sulfur Metal-Silicate Partitioning During Core-Mantle Differentiation

James Badro

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2018