The Late Stage of Terrestrial Planet Formation

Details The Late Stage of Terrestrial Planet Formation The Late Stage of Terrestrial Planet Formation

Sep 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999dda....31.0304a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #31, #03.04

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We performed three-dimenstional N-body integrations of the final stages of terrestrial planet formation. We report the results of ten simulations beginning with 22-55 initial planetary embryos spanning the range 0.5 - 1.5 AU, each with an initial mass of 0.04 - 0.13Mearth . Collisions were treated as inelastic mergers. We followed the evolution of each system for 2 10(8) years at which time a few terrestrial-type planets remained. On average, our simulations produced 2 planets larger than 0.5Mearth in the terrestrial region (1 simulation with one m >= 0.5Mearth planet, 8 simulations with two m >= 0.5Mearth planets, and 1 simulation with m >= 0.5Mearth planets). These Earth-like planets have eccentricities and orbital spacing considerably larger than the terrestrial planets. We also examined the angular momentum contributions of each collision to the final spin angular momentum of a planet, with an emphasis on the type of impact which is believed to have triggered the formation of the Earth's Moon. There were an average of 2 impacts per simulation that contributed more angular momentum to a planet than is currently present in the Earth/Moon system. Our results show that the spin angular momentum states of the final planets are generally the result of contributions made by the last few large impacts. Our results suggest that the current angular momentum of the Earth/Moon system may be the result of more than one large impact rather than a single impact.

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