Chaotic capture of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids in the early Solar System

Chapter 3: The Origins and Evolution of Planetary Systems

The materials that form the diverse chemicals and structures on Earth-from mountains to oceans and biological organisms-all originated in a universe dominated by hydrogen and helium. Over billions of years, the composition and structure of the galaxies and stars evolved, and the elements of life, CHONPS, were formed through nucleosynthesis in stellar cores. Climactic events such as supernovae and stellar collisions produced heavier elements and spread them throughout the cosmos, often to be incorporated into new, more metal-rich stars. Stars typically form in molecular clouds containing small amounts of dust through the collapse of a high-density core. The surrounding nebular material is then pulled into a protoplanetary disk, from which planets, moons, asteroids, and comets eventually accrete. During the accretion of planetary systems, turbulent mixing can expose matter to a variety of different thermal and radiative environments. Chemical and physical changes in planetary system materials occur before and throughout the process of accretion, though many factors such as distance from the star, impact history, and level of heating experienced combine to ultimately determine the final geophysical characteristics. In Earth's planetary system, called the Solar System, after the orbits of the planets had settled into their current configuration, large impacts became rare, and the composition of and relative positions of objects became largely fixed. Further evolution of the respective chemical and physical environments of the planets-geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere-then became dependent on their local geochemistry, their atmospheric interactions with solar radiation, and smaller asteroid impacts. On Earth, the presence of land, air, and water, along with an abundance of important geophysical and geochemical phenomena, led to a habitable planet where conditions were right for life to thrive.

Lucy and Jupiter - understanding the planetary origins

The Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit have been preserved unaltered since the early ages of our Solar System. In October 2021, NASA launched its mission, Lucy, to visit and study these asteroids in order to learn more about the original building blocks that formed our planets.

GAUSS - genesis of asteroids and evolution of the solar system: A sample return mission to Ceres

The goal of Project GAUSS (Genesis of Asteroids and evolUtion of the Solar System) is to return samples from the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the most accessible candidate of ocean worlds and the largest reservoir of water in the inner Solar System. It shows active volcanism and hydrothermal activities in recent history. Recent evidence for the existence of a subsurface ocean on Ceres and the complex geochemistry suggest past habitability and even the potential for ongoing habitability. GAUSS will return samples from Ceres with the aim of answering the following top-level scientific questions: What is the origin of Ceres and what does this imply for the origin of water and other volatiles in the inner Solar System?What are the physical properties and internal structure of Ceres? What do they tell us about the evolutionary and aqueous alteration history of dwarf planets?What are the astrobiological implications of Ceres? Is it still habitable today?What are the mineralogical connections between Ceres and our current collections of carbonaceous meteorites?

The 13CO-rich atmosphere of a young accreting super-Jupiter

Isotope abundance ratios have an important role in astronomy and planetary sciences, providing insights into the origin and evolution of the Solar System, interstellar chemistry and stellar nucleosynthesis^1,2. In contrast to deuterium/hydrogen ratios, carbon isotope ratios are found to be roughly constant (around 89) in the Solar System^1,3, but do vary on galactic scales with a ¹²C/¹³C isotopologue ratio of around 68 in the current local interstellar medium^4-6. In molecular clouds and protoplanetary disks, ¹²CO/¹³CO ratios can be altered by ice and gas partitioning⁷, low-temperature isotopic ion-exchange reactions⁸ and isotope-selective photodissociation⁹. Here we report observations of ¹³CO in the atmosphere of the young, accreting super-Jupiter TYC 8998-760-1 b, at a statistical significance of more than six sigma. Marginalizing over the planet's atmospheric temperature structure, chemical composition and spectral calibration uncertainties suggests a ¹²CO/¹³CO ratio of [Formula: see text](90% confidence), a substantial enrichment in ¹³C with respect to the terrestrial standard and the local interstellar value. As the current location of TYC 8998-760-1 b at greater than or equal to 160 astronomical units is far beyond the CO snowline, we postulate that it accreted a substantial fraction of its carbon from ices enriched in ¹³C through fractionation.

Small All-Range Lidar for Asteroid and Comet Core Missions

We report the development of a new type of space lidar specifically designed for missions to small planetary bodies for both topographic mapping and support of sample collection or landing. The instrument is designed to have a wide dynamic range with several operation modes for different mission phases. The laser transmitter consists of a fiber laser that is intensity modulated with a return-to-zero pseudo-noise (RZPN) code. The receiver detects the coded pulse-train by correlating the detected signal with the RZPN kernel. Unlike regular pseudo noise (PN) lidars, the RZPN kernel is set to zero outside laser firing windows, which removes most of the background noise over the receiver integration time. This technique enables the use of low peak-power but high pulse-rate lasers, such as fiber lasers, for long-distance ranging without aliasing. The laser power and the internal gain of the detector can both be adjusted to give a wide measurement dynamic range. The laser modulation code pattern can also be reconfigured in orbit to optimize measurements to different measurement environments. The receiver uses a multi-pixel linear mode photon-counting HgCdTe avalanche photodiode (APD) array with near quantum limited sensitivity at near to mid infrared wavelengths where many fiber lasers and diode lasers operate. The instrument is modular and versatile and can be built mostly with components developed by the optical communication industry.

Chromium Isotopic Evidence for Mixing of NC and CC Reservoirs in Polymict Ureilites: Implications for Dynamical Models of the Early Solar System

Nucleosynthetic isotope anomalies show that the first few million years of solar system history were characterized by two distinct cosmochemical reservoirs, CC (carbonaceous chondrites and related differentiated meteorites) and NC (the terrestrial planets and all other groups of chondrites and differentiated meteorites), widely interpreted to correspond to the outer and inner solar system, respectively. At some point, however, bulk CC and NC materials became mixed, and several dynamical models offer explanations for how and when this occurred. We use xenoliths of CC materials in polymict ureilite (NC) breccias to test the applicability of such models. Polymict ureilites represent regolith on ureilitic asteroids but contain carbonaceous chondrite-like xenoliths. We present the first 54Cr isotope data for such clasts, which, combined with oxygen and hydrogen isotopes, show that they are unique CC materials that became mixed with NC materials in these breccias. It has been suggested that such xenoliths were implanted into ureilites by outer solar system bodies migrating into the inner solar system during the gaseous disk phase ~3-5 Myr after CAI, as in the "Grand Tack" model. However, combined textural, petrologic, and spectroscopic observations suggest that they were added to ureilitic regolith at ~50-60 Myr after CAI, along with ordinary, enstatite, and Rumuruti-type chondrites, as a result of breakup of multiple parent bodies in the asteroid belt at this time. This is consistent with models for an early instability of the giant planets. The C-type asteroids from which the xenoliths were derived were already present in inner solar system orbits.

Search for L5 Earth Trojans with DECam

Most of the major planets in the Solar System support populations of co-orbiting bodies, known as Trojans, at their L4 and L5 Lagrange points. In contrast, Earth has only one known co-orbiting companion. This paper presents the results from a search for Earth Trojans using the DECam instrument on the Blanco Telescope at CTIO. This search found no additional Trojans in spite of greater coverage compared to previous surveys of the L5 point. Therefore, the main result of this work is to place the most stringent constraints to date on the population of Earth Trojans. These constraints depend on assumptions regarding the underlying population properties, especially the slope of the magnitude distribution (which in turn depends on the size and albedo distributions of the objects). For standard assumptions, we calculate upper limits to a 90% confidence limit on the L5 population of N ET < 1 for magnitude H < 15.5, N ET =60-85 for H < 19.7, and N ET = 97 for H=20.4. This latter magnitude limit corresponds to Trojans ∼300 m in size for albedo 0.15. At H=19.7, these upper limits are consistent with previous L4 Earth Trojan constraints and significantly improve L5 constraints.

History of the Terminal Cataclysm Paradigm: Epistemology of a Planetary Bombardment That Never (?) Happened

This study examines the history of the paradigm concerning a lunar (or solar-systemwide)terminal cataclysm (also called “Late Heavy Bombardment” or LHB), a putative, brief spikein impacts at ~3.9 Ga ago, preceded by low impact rates. We examine origin of the ideas, why theywere accepted, and why the ideas are currently being seriously revised, if not abandoned. Thepaper is divided into the following sections:1. Overview of paradigm.2. Pre-Apollo views (1949-1969).3. Initial suggestions of cataclysm (ca. 1974).4. Ironies.5. Alternative suggestions, megaregolith evolution (1970s).6. Impact melt rocks “establish” cataclysm (1990).7. Imbrium redux (ca. 1998).8. Impact melt clasts (early 2000s).9. Dating of front-side lunar basins?10. Dynamical models “explain” the cataclysm (c. 2000s).11. Asteroids as a test case.12. Impact melts predating 4.0 Ga ago (ca. 2008-present.).13. Biological issues.14. Growing doubts (ca. 1994-2014).15. Evolving Dynamical Models (ca. 2001-present).16. Connections to lunar origin.17. Dismantling the paradigm (2015-2018).18. “Megaregolith Evolution Model” for explaining the data.19. Conclusions and new directions for future work.The author hopes that this open-access discussion may prove useful for classroom discussionsof how science moves forward through self-correction of hypotheses.

Instabilities in the Early Solar System due to a Self-gravitating Disk

Modern studies of the early solar system routinely invoke the possibility of an orbital instability among the giant planets triggered by gravitational interactions between the planets and a massive exterior disk of planetesimals. Previous works have suggested that this instability can be substantially delayed (~100s Myr) after the formation of the giant planets. Bodies in the disk are typically treated in a semi-active manner, wherein their gravitational force on the planets is included, but interactions between the planetesimals are ignored. We perform N-body numerical simulations using GENGA, which makes use of GPUs to allow for the inclusion of all gravitational interactions between bodies. Although our simulated Kuiper belt particles are more massive than the probable masses of real primordial Kuiper belt objects, our simulations indicate that the self-stirring of the primordial Kuiper belt is very important to the dynamics of the giant planet instability. We find that interactions between planetesimals dynamically heat the disk and typically prevent the outer solar system instability from being delayed by more than a few tens of million years after giant planet formation. Longer delays occur in a small fraction of systems that have at least 3.5 AU gaps between the planets and planetesimal disk. Our final planetary configurations match the solar system at a rate consistent with other previous works in most regards. Pre-instability heating of the disk typically yields final Jovian eccentricities comparable to the modern solar system value, which has been a difficult constraint to match in past works.

Constraining the Time Interval for the Origin of Life on Earth

Estimates of the time at which life arose on Earth make use of two types of evidence. First, astrophysical and geophysical studies provide a timescale for the formation of Earth and the Moon, for large impact events on early Earth, and for the cooling of the early magma ocean. From this evidence, we can deduce a habitability boundary, which is the earliest point at which Earth became habitable. Second, biosignatures in geological samples, including microfossils, stromatolites, and chemical isotope ratios, provide evidence for when life was actually present. From these observations we can deduce a biosignature boundary, which is the earliest point at which there is clear evidence that life existed. Studies with molecular phylogenetics and records of the changing level of oxygen in the atmosphere give additional information that helps to determine the biosignature boundary. Here, we review the data from a wide range of disciplines to summarize current information on the timings of these two boundaries. The habitability boundary could be as early as 4.5 Ga, the earliest possible estimate of the time at which Earth had a stable crust and hydrosphere, or as late as 3.9 Ga, the end of the period of heavy meteorite bombardment. The lack of consensus on whether there was a late heavy meteorite bombardment that was significant enough to prevent life is the largest uncertainty in estimating the time of the habitability boundary. The biosignature boundary is more closely constrained. Evidence from carbon isotope ratios and stromatolite fossils both point to a time close to 3.7 Ga. Life must have emerged in the interval between these two boundaries. The time taken for life to appear could, therefore, be within 200 Myr or as long as 800 Myr. Key Words: Origin of life-Astrobiology-Habitability-Biosignatures-Geochemistry-Early Earth. Astrobiology 18, 343-364.

Hydrogen and Hydrocarbon Gases, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, and Amorphous Carbon Produced by Multiple Shock Compression of Liquid Benzene up to 27.4 GPa

Phase diagrams of benzene have been reported on the basis of data mainly obtained from static compression at various pressure-temperature, P-T, conditions. However, there are few data in the high-pressure and high temperature-region of the phase diagram. To understand the physical and chemical behavior of benzene in that region, multiple shock compression of benzene was evaluated by a recovery experimental system that directly analyzed the shocked samples. The shocked samples were composed of the remaining benzene, gases (H₂, CH₄, C₂H₄, C₂H₆, C₃H₆, and C₃H₈), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with molecular weights from 128 (naphthalene) to 300 (coronene), and amorphous carbon. The abundances of these chemical species varied according to the P-T conditions induced by shock compression. Samples in the lower-pressure and lower-temperature region of the a-C:H phase in the phase diagram contained a significant amount of benzene as well as amorphous carbon. In the higher-pressure and higher-temperature region of the a-C:H phase, benzene was mostly converted into amorphous carbon (H/C = 0.2), H₂, and CH₄. Therefore, the amorphous carbon in the present study was produced by a different pathway than that in previous studies that have detected hydrogenated amorphous carbon (H/C = 1). For earth sciences, the present study can provide basic information on the delivery to the early earth of extraterrestrial organic materials related to the origin of life.

Cometary science after Rosetta

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission ended operations on 30 September 2016 having spent over 2 years in close proximity to its target comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Shortly before this, in summer 2016, a discussion meeting was held to examine how the results of the mission could be framed in terms of cometary and solar system science in general. This paper provides a brief history of the Rosetta mission, and gives an overview of the meeting and the contents of this associated special issue.This article is part of the themed issue 'Cometary science after Rosetta'.

ACCRETION OF SATURN'S INNER MID-SIZED MOONS FROM A MASSIVE PRIMORDIAL ICE RING

Saturn's rings are rock-poor, containing 90 to 95% ice by mass. As a group, Saturn's moons interior to and including Tethys are also about 90% ice. Tethys itself contains < 6% rock by mass, in contrast to its similar-mass outer neighbor Dione, which contains > 40% rock. Here we simulate the evolution of a massive primordial ice-rich ring and the production of satellites as ring material spreads beyond the Roche limit. We describe the Roche-interior ring with an analytic model, and use an N-body code to describe material beyond the Roche limit. We track the accretion and interactions of spawned satellites, including tidal interaction with the planet, assuming a tidal dissipation factor for Saturn of Q ~ 104. We find that ring torques and capture of moons into mutual resonances produces a system of ice-rich inner moons that extends outward to approximately Tethys's orbit in 109 years, even with relatively slow orbital expansion due to tides. The resulting mass and semi-major axis distribution of spawned moons resembles that of Mimas, Enceladus and Tethys. We estimate the mass of rock delivered to the moons by external cometary impactors during a late-heavy bombardment. We find that the inner moons receive a mass in rock comparable to their current total rock content, while Dione and Rhea receive an order-of-magnitude less rock than their current rock content. This suggests that external contamination may have been the primary source of rock in the inner moons, and that Dione and Rhea formed from much more rock-rich source material. Reproducing the distribution of rock among the current inner moons is challenging, and appears to require large impactors and stochasticity and/or the presence of some rock in the initial ring.

Perspectives on Comets, Comet-like Asteroids, and Their Predisposition to Provide an Environment That Is Friendly to Life

In recent years, studies have shown that there are many similarities between comets and asteroids. In some cases, it cannot even be determined to which of these groups an object belongs. This is especially true for objects found beyond the main asteroid belt. Because of the lack of comet fragments, more progress has been made concerning the chemical composition of asteroids. In particular, the SMASSII classification establishes a link between the reflecting spectra and chemical composition of asteroids and meteorites. To find clues for the chemical structure of comets, the parameters of all known asteroids of the SMASSII classification were compared to those of comet groups like the Encke-type comets, the Jupiter-family comets, and the Halley-type comets, as well as comet-like objects like the damocloids and the centaurs. Fifty-six SMASSII objects similar to comets were found and are categorized as comet-like asteroids in this work. Aside from the chemistry, it is assumed that the available energy on these celestial bodies plays an important role concerning habitability. For the determination of the available energy, the effective temperature was calculated. Additionally, the size of these objects was considered in order to evaluate the possibility of a liquid water core, which provides an environment that is more likely to support processes necessary to create the building blocks of life. Further study of such objects could be notable for the period of the Late Heavy Bombardment and could therefore provide important implications for our understanding of the inner workings of the prebiotic evolution within the Solar System since the beginning.

Constraints from Comets on the Formation and Volatile Acquisition of the Planets and Satellites

Comets play a dual role in understanding the formation and evolution of the solar system. First, the composition of comets provides information about the origin of the giant planets and their moons because comets formed early and their composition is not expected to have evolved significantly since formation. They, therefore serve as a record of conditions during the early stages of solar system formation. Once comets had formed, their orbits were perturbed allowing them to travel into the inner solar system and impact the planets. In this way they contributed to the volatile inventory of planetary atmospheres. We review here how knowledge of comet composition up to the time of the Rosetta mission has contributed to understanding the formation processes of the giant planets, their moons and small icy bodies in the solar system. We also discuss how comets contributed to the volatile inventories of the giant and terrestrial planets.

Solar System evolution from compositional mapping of the asteroid belt

Advances in the discovery and characterization of asteroids over the past decade have revealed an unanticipated underlying structure that points to a dramatic early history of the inner Solar System. The asteroids in the main asteroid belt have been discovered to be more compositionally diverse with size and distance from the Sun than had previously been known. This implies substantial mixing through processes such as planetary migration and the subsequent dynamical processes.

A search for thermal excursions from ancient extraterrestrial impacts using Hadean zircon Ti-U-Th-Pb depth profiles

Few terrestrial localities preserve more than a trace lithic record prior to ca. 3.8 Ga greatly limiting our understanding of the first 700 Ma of Earth history, a period inferred to have included a spike in the bolide flux to the inner solar system at ca. 3.85-3.95 Ga (the Late Heavy Bombardment, LHB). An accessible record of this era may be found in Hadean detrital zircons from the Jack Hills, Western Australia, in the form of μm-scale epitaxial overgrowths. By comparing crystallization temperatures of pre-3.8 Ga zircon overgrowths to the archive of zircon temperature spectra, it should, in principle, be possible to identify a distinctive impact signature. We have developed Ti-U-Th-Pb ion microprobe depth profiling to obtain age and temperature information within these zircon overgrowths and undertaken a feasibility study of its possible use in identifying impact events. Of eight grains profiled in this fashion, four have overgrowths of LHB-era age. Age vs. temperature profiles reveal a period between ca. 3.85-3.95 Ga (i.e., LHB era) characterized by significantly higher temperatures (approximately 840-875 °C) than do older or younger zircons or zircon domains (approximately 630-750 °C). However, temperatures approaching 900 °C can result in Pb isotopic exchange rendering interpretation of these profiles nonunique. Coupled age-temperature depth profiling shows promise in this role, and the preliminary data we report could represent the first terrestrial evidence for impact-related heating during the LHB.

A thick cloud of Neptune Trojans and their colors

The dynamical and physical properties of asteroids offer one of the few constraints on the formation, evolution, and migration of the giant planets. Trojan asteroids share a planet's semimajor axis but lead or follow it by about 60 degrees near the two triangular Lagrangian points of gravitational equilibrium. Here we report the discovery of a high-inclination Neptune Trojan, 2005 TN(53). This discovery demonstrates that the Neptune Trojan population occupies a thick disk, which is indicative of "freeze-in" capture instead of in situ or collisional formation. The Neptune Trojans appear to have a population that is several times larger than the Jupiter Trojans. Our color measurements show that Neptune Trojans have statistically indistinguishable slightly red colors, which suggests that they had a common formation and evolutionary history and are distinct from the classical Kuiper Belt objects.

A low density of 0.8 g cm-3 for the Trojan binary asteroid 617 Patroclus

The Trojan population consists of two swarms of asteroids following the same orbit as Jupiter and located at the L4 and L5 stable Lagrange points of the Jupiter-Sun system (leading and following Jupiter by 60 degrees ). The asteroid 617 Patroclus is the only known binary Trojan. The orbit of this double system was hitherto unknown. Here we report that the components, separated by 680 km, move around the system's centre of mass, describing a roughly circular orbit. Using this orbital information, combined with thermal measurements to estimate the size of the components, we derive a very low density of 0.8(- 0.1)+0.2 g cm(-3). The components of 617 Patroclus are therefore very porous or composed mostly of water ice, suggesting that they could have been formed in the outer part of the Solar System.

Origin of the cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment period of the terrestrial planets

The petrology record on the Moon suggests that a cataclysmic spike in the cratering rate occurred approximately 700 million years after the planets formed; this event is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB). Planetary formation theories cannot naturally account for an intense period of planetesimal bombardment so late in Solar System history. Several models have been proposed to explain a late impact spike, but none of them has been set within a self-consistent framework of Solar System evolution. Here we propose that the LHB was triggered by the rapid migration of the giant planets, which occurred after a long quiescent period. During this burst of migration, the planetesimal disk outside the orbits of the planets was destabilized, causing a sudden massive delivery of planetesimals to the inner Solar System. The asteroid belt was also strongly perturbed, with these objects supplying a significant fraction of the LHB impactors in accordance with recent geochemical evidence. Our model not only naturally explains the LHB, but also reproduces the observational constraints of the outer Solar System.

Origin of the orbital architecture of the giant planets of the Solar System

Planetary formation theories suggest that the giant planets formed on circular and coplanar orbits. The eccentricities of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, however, reach values of 6 per cent, 9 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively. In addition, the inclinations of the orbital planes of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune take maximum values of approximately 2 degrees with respect to the mean orbital plane of Jupiter. Existing models for the excitation of the eccentricity of extrasolar giant planets have not been successfully applied to the Solar System. Here we show that a planetary system with initial quasi-circular, coplanar orbits would have evolved to the current orbital configuration, provided that Jupiter and Saturn crossed their 1:2 orbital resonance. We show that this resonance crossing could have occurred as the giant planets migrated owing to their interaction with a disk of planetesimals. Our model reproduces all the important characteristics of the giant planets' orbits, namely their final semimajor axes, eccentricities and mutual inclinations.