New Insight into the Solar System’s Transition Disk Phase Provided by the Metal-rich Carbonaceous Chondrite Isheyevo
Abstract
Many aspects of planet formation are controlled by the amount of gas remaining in the natal protoplanetary disks (PPDs). Infrared observations show that PPDs undergo a transition stage at several megayears, during which gas densities are reduced. Our Solar System would have experienced such a stage. However, there is currently no data that provides insight into this crucial time in our PPD’s evolution. We show that the Isheyevo meteorite contains the first definitive evidence for a transition disk stage in our Solar System. Isheyevo belongs to a class of metal-rich meteorites whose components have been dated at almost 5 Myr after formation of Ca, Al-rich inclusions, and exhibits unique sedimentary layers that imply formation through gentle sedimentation. We show that such layering can occur via the gentle sweep-up of material found in the impact plume resulting from the collision of two planetesimals. Such sweep-up requires gas densities consistent with observed transition disks (10-12-10-11 g cm-3). As such, Isheyevo presents the first evidence of our own transition disk and provides new constraints on the evolution of our solar nebula.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- March 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1088/2041-8205/801/2/L22
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1412.1818
- Bibcode:
- 2015ApJ...801L..22M
- Keywords:
-
- meteorites;
- meteors;
- meteoroids;
- planet–disk interactions;
- planets and satellites: formation;
- protoplanetary disks;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters