Making other earths: dynamical simulations of terrestrial planet formation and water delivery

By S. Raymond, Thomas R. Quinn, J. I. L. D. O. Astronomy, U. Washington, Seattle, Wa, Lunar, Planetary Laboratory, U. Arizon, Tucson and 1 more. 2003

386 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present results from 44 simulations of late stage planetary accretion, focusing on the delivery of volatiles (primarily water) to the terrestrial planets. Our simulations include both planetary “embryos” (defined as Moon to Mars sized protoplanets) and planetesimals, assuming that the embryos formed via oligarchic growth. We investigate volatile delivery as a function of Jupiter’s mass, position and eccentricity, the position of the snow line, and the density (in solids) of the solar nebula. In all simulations, we form 1–4 terrestrial planets inside 2 AU, which vary in mass and volatile content. In 44 simulations we have formed 43 planets between 0.8 and 1.5 AU, including 11 “habitable” planets between 0.9 and 1.1 AU. These planets range from dry worlds to “water worlds” with 100 + oceans of water (1 ocean = 1.5 × 10 24 g), and vary in mass between 0.23M⊕ and 3.85M⊕. There is a good deal of stochastic noise in these simulations, but the most important parameter is the planetesimal mass we choose, which reflects the surface density in solids past the snow line. A high density in this region results in the formation of a smaller number of terrestrial planets with larger masses and higher water content, as compared with planets which form in systems with lower densities. We find that an eccentric Jupiter produces drier terrestrial planets with higher eccentricities than a circular one. In cases with Jupiter at 7 AU, we form what we call “super embryos,” 1–2M⊕ protoplanets which can serve as the accretion seeds for 2 + M⊕ planets with large water contents.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4f73a63fc158b3d4ff5d73e46a4b74268f4fe463

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Citations in the corpus

Atmospheric Escape and Evolution of Terrestrial Planets and Satellites (2008, background): “However, recent models of solar system formation (e.g., Morbidelli et al. 2000; Raymond et al. 2004) suggest a wet early Venus (e.g., Dayhoff et al. 1967; Walker et al. 1970; Donahue and Pollack 1983; Kasting and Pollack 1983) because the suggest that most of Earth’s water came from the asteroid…”
ABIOTIC O2 LEVELS ON PLANETS AROUND F, G, K, AND M STARS: POSSIBLE FALSE POSITIVES FOR LIFE? (2015, background): “This would be true for terrestrial planets around M stars with long pre-main sequence lifetimes, regardless of their (largely unconstrained) initial volatile abundances (e.g., Raymond et al. 2004, 2007b,a, 2009; Ciesla et al. 2015).”
The habitability of Proxima Centauri b. I. Irradiation, rotation and volatile inventory from formation to the present (2016, background): “One can easily imagine an unlucky planet located in the habitable zone that is completely dry, and such situations do arise in simulations of planet formation (Raymond et al. 2004).”
Emergence of a Habitable Planet (2007, background): “More recent calculations of solar system formation have yielded similar results (Canup and Agnor 2000; Raymond et al. 2004).”
Water and astrobiology (2007, background): “As noted, Earth was more likely to accrete planetary embryos from farther away during the second half its accretion, including 10–25% from beyond 1.5AU and some wetter ones from the outer asteroid belt at 2.5–3.5AU (Morbidelli et al., 2000; Chambers, 2004; Raymond et al., 2004).”
Debris disks as signposts of terrestrial planet formation (2011, background): “…on excited orbits have all neglected the planet-planet scattering phase during which the giant planets actually acquired their eccentricities (Chambers & Cassen 2002; Levison & Agnor 2003; Raymond et al. 2004; Raymond 2006; Ji et al. 2011), which clearly plays a very important role in the dynamics.”
Origin of water in the inner Solar System: Planetesimals scattered inward during Jupiter and Saturn's rapid gas accretion (2017, background): “In the classical model, the terrestrial planets’ feeding zones extended into the asteroid region, and material originating past 2.5-3 AU represents the source of the terrestrial planets’ water (Morbidelli et al., 2000; Raymond et al., 2004, 2007; O’Brien et al., 2006).”
Toward a Deterministic Model of Planetary Formation. IV. Effects of Type I Migration (2008, neutral): “Previous simulations (Chambers & Wetherill 1998; Agnor et al. 1999; Kominami & Ida 2002; Raymond et al. 2004) show that the most massive terrestrial planets tend to form in inner regions of the computational domain, where the isolated cores are initially placed.”
A theoretical framework for volcanic degassing chemistry in a comparative planetology perspective and implications for planetary atmospheres (2014, background): “4 In addition to heliocentric distance, one obvious possibility to explain such a diversity is to relate it with long gone processes, such as changes in the luminosity of the Sun, chondritic bombardments, intensity of the magnetic field, solar wind erosion, each of which has clearly played a role on”
COLLISIONS BETWEEN GRAVITY-DOMINATED BODIES. II. THE DIVERSITY OF IMPACT OUTCOMES DURING THE END STAGE OF PLANET FORMATION (2011, background): “The initial locations of material that accretes into terrestrial planets have been used to investigate the formation of Earth-like planets under the assumption of perfect merging (e.g., Morbidelli et al. 2000; Raymond et al. 2004, 2007).”
A Decreased Probability of Habitable Planet Formation around Low-Mass Stars (2007, background): “Second, for a given set of parameters, there still exists a range of potential outcomes because of the stochastic nature of the final stages of planetary growth (e.g., Wetherill 1996, Raymond et al. 2004; see Fig.”
Origins of volatile elements (H, C, N, noble gases) on Earth and Mars in light of recent results from the ROSETTA cometary mission (2016, neutral): “…suggest that, during its formation, the Earth accreted water and other volatile elements predominantly from planetesimals parented to primitive asteroids, i.e. with composition similar to carbonaceous chondrites (Morbidelli et al., 2000; Raymond et al., 2004, 2007; O’Brien et al., 2006, 2014).”
Internal structure of massive terrestrial planets (2005, background): “It is important to note that a ertain fra tion of the Super-Earths will have a substantial volatile ontent (primarily water); while dry terrestrial planets are most ommon in the inner disk, the expe ted fra tion of 'o ean planets' is poorly known (Raymond et al. 2004).”
Building the terrestrial planets: Constrained accretion in the inner Solar System (2009, methodology): “…is simply that eccentric giant planets perturb terrestrial and aster- oidal bodies more strongly and destroy a larger fraction of the disk via ejection and collisions with the Sun than circular giant planets (Chambers & Cassen 2002; Levison & Agnor 2003; Raymond et al. 2004; O’Brien et al. 2006).”
Building Terrestrial Planets (2012, background): “The latter are formed on stable orbits in the 0.5–2-AU region on a timescale of several tens of millions of years (e.g., Chambers & Wetherill 2001; O’Brien et al. 2006; Raymond et al. 2004, 2005).”
Constructing the secular architecture of the solar system II: The terrestrial planets (2009, neutral): “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…”
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.”