A low mass for Mars from Jupiter’s early gas-driven migration

By Kevin J. Walsh, A. Morbidelli, S. Raymond, D. O'Brien, A. Mandell. Nature, 2011

1,086 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Jupiter and Saturn formed in a few million years (ref. 1) from a gas-dominated protoplanetary disk, and were susceptible to gas-driven migration of their orbits on timescales of only ∼100,000 years (ref. 2). Hydrodynamic simulations show that these giant planets can undergo a two-stage, inward-then-outward, migration. The terrestrial planets finished accreting much later, and their characteristics, including Mars' small mass, are best reproduced by starting from a planetesimal disk with an outer edge at about one astronomical unit from the Sun (1 au is the Earth–Sun distance). Here we report simulations of the early Solar System that show how the inward migration of Jupiter to 1.5 au, and its subsequent outward migration, lead to a planetesimal disk truncated at 1 au; the terrestrial planets then form from this disk over the next 30–50 million years, with an Earth/Mars mass ratio consistent with observations. Scattering by Jupiter initially empties but then repopulates the asteroid belt, with inner-belt bodies originating between 1 and 3 au and outer-belt bodies originating between and beyond the giant planets. This explains the significant compositional differences across the asteroid belt. The key aspect missing from previous models of terrestrial planet formation is the substantial radial migration of the giant planets, which suggests that their behaviour is more similar to that inferred for extrasolar planets than previously thought.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9a5b6dd3eae5a848084e64cb24380571c8c09f9a

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Citations in the corpus

Origin and evolution of the atmospheres of early Venus, Earth and Mars (2018, background): “In agreement with planetary dynamics model results related to the “Grand Tack” hypothesis (Walsh et al. 2011; O’Brien et al. 2014) and the recent Ru isotope analysis of primitive meteoritic material (Fischer-Gödde and Kleine 2017), it is now expected that volatile-rich carbonaceous chondritic…”
Melting and mixing states of the Earth’s mantle after the Moon-forming impact (2015, methodology): “Alternatively, a recent model of planet formation, the socalled Grand Tack model (Walsh et al., 2011), may suggest a different outcome.”
IN SITU FORMATION AND DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION OF HOT JUPITER SYSTEMS (2015, background): “…between such conditions and those inferred from the solar nebula can be resolved by accounting for Jupiter’s inward-then-outward “Grand Tack” (Walsh et al. 2011), which may have precipitated the destruction of any early-forming Super-Earths within our own system (Batygin and Laughlin…”
COLLISIONS BETWEEN GRAVITY-DOMINATED BODIES. II. THE DIVERSITY OF IMPACT OUTCOMES DURING THE END STAGE OF PLANET FORMATION (2011, neutral): “…in agreement with our Solar System; moreover, the dynamical history of the giant planets in our Solar System is still an active area of research with new ideas that have not yet been incorporated into detailed accretion studies of the terrestrial planets (e.g., Walsh et al. 2011; Morbidelli 2010).”
The origins and concentrations of water, carbon, nitrogen and noble gases on Earth (2014, background): “the inner planet region : the locally dry bodies that were present in the Earth's forming region became depleted due to their accretion, which allowed more distant wet planetesimals to contribute to the proto-Earth as accretion proceeded (Morbidelli et al., 2000; Raymond et al., 2009; Walsh et al., ”
Outgassing History and Escape of the Martian Atmosphere and Water Inventory (2015, background): “In a more recent study, Walsh et al. (2011) argues that the small mass of Mars indicates that the terrestrial planets in the Solar System have formed from a narrow material annulus, rather than a disc extending to Jupiter.”
Forming the cores of giant planets from the radial pebble flux in protoplanetary discs (2014, methodology): “This is a desirable feature for the Grand Tack scenario (Masset & Snellgrove 2001; Morbidelli & Crida 2007; Walsh et al. 2011), where Saturn catches up with Jupiter to share a common gap, which leads to outward migration.”
Density of asteroids (2012, background): “Together with the dynamic of asteroids, it is one of the fundamental knowledge required to constrain the models of planetary formation ( e.g. , Morbidelli et al., 2005; Walsh et al., 2011).”
The Compositional Structure of the Asteroid Belt (2015, background): “…the terrestrial planets (the mass of Mars) and with the Asteroid Belt (orbital distributions and water delivery), a recently proposed model, the Grand Tack Model, invokes a scattering implantation of nearly the entire Asteroid Belt population from different parent populations (Walsh et al., 2011).”
The bulk composition of Mars (2013, methodology): “Data are from experimental studies by Falloon and Green (1988), Faloon et al. (1988), Takahashi and Kushiro (1983), Hertzberg and Zhang (1996), Walter (1998), Wasylenki et al. (2003), and Agee and Draper (2004).”
The primordial nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (2015, background): “…Dodson-Robinson et al. 2008; Weidenschilling 2008) and migration (e.g., Masset & Snellgrove 2001; Morbidelli & Crida 2007; Morbidelli et al. 2007; Walsh et al. 2011) in a gas disk show that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune likely had a compact orbital configuration at heliocentric distances…”
Separating gas-giant and ice-giant planets by halting pebble accretion (2014, background): “Such close formation distances for the ice giants are anyway not favoured in current models of the early migration history of the solar system (Walsh et al. 2011): following the gas giants, the ice giants migrated inwards, but remained outside 5 AU, and subsequently moved outwards to distances…”
Water delivery and giant impacts in the 'Grand Tack' scenario (2014, methodology): “This is not precisely the same qualification as used by Walsh et al. (2011), where they considered as a planet all bodies with a final mass larger than 0:03 M .”
The habitability of Proxima Centauri b. I. Irradiation, rotation and volatile inventory from formation to the present (2016, methodology): “…model, water was delivered to Earth by C-type material, but those bodies actually condensed much farther from the Sun and were both implanted into the asteroid belt and scattered to the terrestrial planet-forming region during Jupiter’s orbital migration (Walsh et al. 2011; O’Brien et al. 2014).”
Accretion and differentiation of the terrestrial planets with implications for the compositions of early-formed Solar System bodies and accretion of water (2014, methodology): “The Grand Tack model of Walsh et al. (2011) achieves this truncation by invoking the large-scale radial gas-driven migration of Jupiter and Saturn.”