Dynamical orbital evolution of asteroids and planetesimals across distinct chemical reservoirs due to accretion growth of planets in the early solar system

N-body numerical simulations code for the orbital motion of asteroids/planetesimals within the asteroid belt under the gravitational influence of the sun and the accreting planets has been developed. The aim is to make qualitative, and to an extent a semi-quantitative argument, regarding the possible extent of radial mixing and homogenization of planetesimal reservoirs of the two observed distinct spectral types , viz., the S-type and C-type, across the heliocentric distances due to their dynamical orbital evolution, thereby, eventually leading to the possible accretion of asteroids having chemically diverse constituents. The spectral S-type and C-type asteroids are broadly considered as the parent bodies of the two observed major meteoritic dichotomy classes, namely, the non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (CC) meteorites, respectively. The present analysis is performed to understand the evolution of the observed dichotomy and its implications due to the nebula and early planetary processes during the initial 10 Myrs (Million years). The homogenization across the two classes is studied in context to the accretion timescales of the planetesimals with respect to the half-life of the potent planetary heat source, 26Al. The accretion over a timescale of ~1.5 Myr. possibly resulted in the planetary-scale differentiation of planetesimals to produce CC and NC achondrites and iron meteorite parent bodies, whereas, the prolonged accretion over a timescale of 2-5 Myrs. resulted in the formation of CC and NC chondrites. Our simulation results indicate a significant role of the initial eccentricities and the masses of the accreting giant planets, specifically, Jupiter and Saturn, in triggering the eccentricity churning of the planetesimals across the radial distances......Comment: Accepte

Heterogeneous distribution of Al-26 at the birth of the Solar System

It is believed that Al-26, a short-lived (t1/2 = 0.73 Ma) and now extinct radionuclide, was uniformly distributed in the nascent Solar System with the initial Al-26/Al-27 ratio of ~5.2\times10-5, suggesting its external stellar origin. However, the stellar source of Al-26 and the manner in which it was injected into the solar system remain controversial: the Al-26 could have been produced by an asymptotic giant branch star, a supernova, or a Wolf-Rayet star and injected either into the protosolar molecular cloud or protoplanetary disk. Corundum (Al2O3) is thermodynamically predicted to be the first condensate from a cooling gas of solar composition. Here we show that micron-sized corundum condensates from O-16-rich gas (Big Delta O-17 ~ -25%) of solar composition recorded heterogeneous distribution of Al-26 at the birth of the solar system: the inferred initial Al-26/Al-27 ratio ranges from ~6.5x10-5 to <2x10-6; ~50% of the corundum grains measured are Al-26-poor. Other Al-26-poor, O-16-rich refractory objects include grossite (CaAl4O7)- and hibonite(CaAl12O19)-rich calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) in CH chondrites, platy hibonite crystals in CM chondrites, and FUN (fractionation and unidentified nuclear isotopic anomalies) CAIs in CV, CO, and CR chondrites. Considering the apparently early and short duration (<0.3 Ma) of condensation of refractory O-16-rich solids in the solar system, we infer that Al-26 was injected into the collapsing protosolar molecular cloud and later homogenized in the protoplanetary disk. The apparent lack of correlation between Al-26 abundance and O-isotope compositions of corundum grains put important constraints on the stellar source of Al-26 in the solar system.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Letters 733, L3

Triggering Collapse of the Presolar Dense Cloud Core and Injecting Short-Lived Radioisotopes with a Shock Wave. I. Varied Shock Speeds

The discovery of decay products of a short-lived radioisotope (SLRI) in the Allende meteorite led to the hypothesis that a supernova shock wave transported freshly synthesized SLRI to the presolar dense cloud core, triggered its self-gravitational collapse, and injected the SLRI into the core. Previous multidimensional numerical calculations of the shock-cloud collision process showed that this hypothesis is plausible when the shock wave and dense cloud core are assumed to remain isothermal at ~10 K, but not when compressional heating to ~1000 K is assumed. Our two-dimensional models (Boss et al. 2008) with the FLASH2.5 adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) hydrodynamics code have shown that a 20 km/sec shock front can simultaneously trigger collapse of a 1 solar mass core and inject shock wave material, provided that cooling by molecular species such as H2O, CO, and H2 is included. Here we present the results for similar calculations with shock speeds ranging from 1 km/sec to 100 km/sec. We find that shock speeds in the range from 5 km/sec to 70 km/sec are able to trigger the collapse of a 2.2 solar mass cloud while simultaneously injecting shock wave material: lower speed shocks do not achieve injection, while higher speed shocks do not trigger sustained collapse. The calculations continue to support the shock-wave trigger hypothesis for the formation of the solar system, though the injection efficiencies in the present models are lower than desired.Comment: 39 pages, 14 figures. in press, Ap

Evolution of the Solar Nebula. IX. Gradients in the Spatial Heterogeneity of the Short-Lived Radioisotopes 60^{60}Fe and 26^{26}Al and the Stable Oxygen Isotopes

Short-lived radioisotopes (SLRI) such as $^{60}$Fe and $^{26}$Al were likely injected into the solar nebula in a spatially and temporally heterogeneous manner. Marginally gravitationally unstable (MGU) disks, of the type required to form gas giant planets, are capable of rapid homogenization of isotopic heterogeneity as well as of rapid radial transport of dust grains and gases throughout a protoplanetary disk. Two different types of new models of a MGU disk in orbit around a solar-mass protostar are presented. The first set has variations in the number of terms in the spherical harmonic solution for the gravitational potential, effectively studying the effect of varying the spatial resolution of the gravitational torques responsible for MGU disk evolution. The second set explores the effects of varying the initial minimum value of the Toomre $Q$ stability parameter, from values of 1.4 to 2.5, i.e., toward increasingly less unstable disks. The new models show that the basic results are largely independent of both sets of variations. MGU disk models robustly result in rapid mixing of initially highly heterogeneous distributions of SLRIs to levels of $\sim$ 10% in both the inner ($$ 10 AU) disk regions, and to even lower levels ($\sim$ 2%) in intermediate regions, where gravitational torques are most effective at mixing. These gradients should have cosmochemical implications for the distribution of SLRIs and stable oxygen isotopes contained in planetesimals (e.g., comets) formed in the giant planet region ($\sim$ 5 to $\sim$ 10 AU) compared to those formed elsewhere.Comment: 37 pages, 1 table, 19 figures, ApJ accepte

Injection of Short-Lived Radionuclides into the Early Solar System from a Faint Supernova with Mixing-Fallback

Several short-lived radionuclides (SLRs) were present in the early solar system, some of which should have formed just prior to or soon after the solar system formation. Stellar nucleosynthesis has been proposed as the mechanism for production of SLRs in the solar system, but no appropriate stellar source has been found to explain the abundances of all solar system SLRs. In this study, we propose a faint supernova with mixing and fallback as a stellar source of SLRs with mean lives of <5 Myr (26Al, 41Ca, 53Mn, and 60Fe) in the solar system. In such a supernova, the inner region of the exploding star experiences mixing, a small fraction of mixed materials is ejected, and the rest undergoes fallback onto the core. The modeled SLR abundances agree well with their solar system abundances if mixing-fallback occurs within the C/O-burning layer. In some cases, the initial solar system abundances of the SLRs can be reproduced within a factor of 2. The dilution factor of supernova ejecta to the solar system materials is ~10E-4 and the time interval between the supernova explosion and the formation of oldest solid materials in the solar system is ~1 Myr. If the dilution occurred due to spherically symmetric expansion, a faint supernova should have occurred nearby the solar system forming region in a star cluster.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure