High-resolution simulations of the final assembly of Earth-like planets I. Terrestrial accretion and dynamics

By S. Raymond, Thomas R. Quinn, J. I. L. D. O. Astronomy, U. Washington, Seattle, Current address at Lasp, U. Colorado, Boulder, Lunar, Planetary Laboratory and 1 more. 2005

294 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The final stage in the formation of terrestrial planets consists of the accumulation of ∼1000-km “planetary embryos” and a swarm of billions of 1–10 km “planetesimals.” During this process, water-rich material is accreted by the terrestrial planets via impacts of water-rich bodies from beyond roughly 2.5 AU. We present results from five high-resolution dynamical simulations. These start from 1000–2000 embryos and planetesimals, roughly 5–10 times more particles than in previous simulations. Each simulation formed 2–4 terrestrial planets with masses between 0.4 and 2.6 Earth masses. The eccentricities of most planets were ∼0.05, lower than in previous simulations, but still higher than for Venus, Earth and Mars. Each planet accreted at least the Earth's current water budget. We demonstrate several new aspects of the accretion process: (1) The feeding zones of terrestrial planets change in time, widening and moving outward. Even in the presence of Jupiter, water-rich material from beyond 2.5 AU is not accreted for several millions of years. (2) Even in the absence of secular resonances, the asteroid belt is cleared of >99% of its original mass by self-scattering of bodies into resonances with Jupiter. (3) If planetary embryos form relatively slowly, then the formation of embryos in the asteroid belt may have been stunted by the presence of Jupiter. (4) Self-interacting planetesimals feel dynamical friction from other small bodies, which has important effects on the eccentricity evolution and outcome of a simulation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2ef7905c3d27353fbdd3ef5df0cb0897a3e069ba

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Citations in the corpus

Origin of water in the inner Solar System: Planetesimals scattered inward during Jupiter and Saturn's rapid gas accretion (2017, background): “The classical model (Wetherill, 1996; Chambers and Wetherill, 1998; Chambers, 2001; Levison and Agnor, 2003; O’Brien et al., 2006; Raymond et al., 2006, 2009, 2014; Morishima et al., 2008, 2010; Fischer et al., 2014) proposes that the giant planets formed near their current locations and influenced…”
A Decreased Probability of Habitable Planet Formation around Low-Mass Stars (2007, background): “Note that systems with close-in giant planets may also contain Earth-like planets, which should be very waterrich (Raymond et al. 2006b; Mandell et al. 2007).”
Asteroids Were Born Big (2009, unknown): “years (Chambers and Wetherill, 1998; Agnor et al., 1999; Chambers, 2001; Raymond et al., 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007; O’Brien et al., 2006; Kenyon and Bromley, 2006).”
THE COMPOSITIONAL DIVERSITY OF EXTRASOLAR TERRESTRIAL PLANETS. I. IN SITU SIMULATIONS (2010, background): “…in a worst-case scenario preventing terrestrial planets from forming, but it may also accelerate terrestrial planet formation and lead to significant radial mixing of material within the system, especially in systems with close-in giant planets (Raymond et al. 2006b; Mandell et al. 2007).”
MIGRATION THEN ASSEMBLY: FORMATION OF NEPTUNE-MASS PLANETS INSIDE 1 AU (2011, methodology): “…and accumulation of embryos into planets in this model, using N-body techniques (Chambers & Wetherill 1998; Agnor et al. 1999; Chambers 2001; Raymond et al. 2006), shows that configurations of three or four planets emerge naturally from an MMSN disk, although the low masses of Mercury and…”
GEODYNAMICS AND RATE OF VOLCANISM ON MASSIVE EARTH-LIKE PLANETS (2008, background): “However, numerical simulations of water delivery during late-stage accretion (Raymond et al. 2004, 2006) produce some planets with the necessary ocean volumes to shut down melting – the stochastic nature of late-scale accretion introduces a great deal of scatter.”
Fossilized condensation lines in the Solar System protoplanetary disk (2015, background): “…with the Earth accreting most of its mass from local, dry planetesimals and just a few percent of an Earth mass from primitive planetesimals coming from the outer asteroid belt, as shown by dynamical models (Morbidelli et al., 2000; Raymond et al., 2004, 2006, 2007; O’Brien et al., 2006, 2014).”
Broad bounds on Earth’s accretion and core formation constrained by geochemical models (2010, methodology): “Two forms for M ( t ) are commonly chosen: a step function (two-stage model), where all of the accretion occurs at a particular instant t 2 ; or an exponential that has similarities with the accretion curves produced by some n -body simulation”
Terrestrial planet formation with strong dynamical friction (2006, methodology): “Raymond et al. (2005a, 2005b) suggest that having embryos in the asteroid belt, as in our simulations and their Simulation 2,”
Thermal evolution of an early magma ocean in interaction with the atmosphere (2012, unknown): “The initial inventory of H 2 O on terrestrial planets may have been much larger [ Raymond et al. , 2006], up to several tens of oceans, but hydrodynamic escape could have removed most of the initial water [see, e.g., Gillmann et al. , 2009].”
Constructing the secular architecture of the solar system II: The terrestrial planets (2009, unknown): “According to our best models (Chambers & Wetherill 1998; Agnor et al. 1999; Chambers 2001; Raymond et al. 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007; O’Brien et al. 2006; Kenyon & Bromley 2006), the terrestrial planets formed by collisions among a population of intermediate objects called planetary embryos, with…”
Ranges of Atmospheric Mass and Composition of Super-Earth Exoplanets (2008, background): “…Venus, and Mars, present-day atmospheres indicate that water and carbon dioxide have remained since accretion, though perhaps the bulk of volatiles were delivered toward the end of accretion (e.g., Morbidelli et al. 2000; Chambers 2006; Raymond et al. 2006; O’Brien, Morbidelli, & Levison 2006).”
Debris disks as signposts of terrestrial planet formation (2011, background): “Given that they contain only 500 planetesimal particles, our simulations cannot fully resolve dynamical friction at late times (e.g. O’Brien et al. 2006; Raymond et al. 2006b).”
Chemical enrichment of giant planets and discs due to pebble drift (2017, background): “Models can place constraints on their location during terrestrial planet formation, requiring them to be near their current locations during the process (e.g. Tsiganis et al. 2005; Raymond et al. 2006; Walsh et al. 2011; Agnor & Lin 2012; Raymond et al. 2014).”