Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p13c1329v&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P13C-1329
Physics
5225 Early Environment Of Earth, 5430 Interiors (8147), 6296 Extra-Solar Planets, 8145 Physics Of Magma And Magma Bodies
Scientific paper
The early evolution of a terrestrial planet may play an important role in its subsequent thermal evolution. Terrestrial super-Earths are expected to evolve similarly to terrestrial planets: quickly cooling from a magma ocean state, in which they experience high surface heat fluxes and temperatures. We study the solidification of magma oceans in terrestrial super-Earths and determine how long this phase lasts in the presence and absence of an atmosphere (grey and water-vapor). In the blackbody approximation the timescales are of order 105 years, while in a grey approximation the timescales can be extended to a few million years for an optically thick atmosphere (τ =100). We find that a 10 earth-mass planet takes about twice as long to cool as a one earth-mass planet. This early epoch is the most amenable to direct observation due to the high planetary heat flux; depending on how long it lasts it might be possible to directly detect super-Earths in this hot state. Development of more sophisticated atmospheric models may allow the inference of outgassing products from spectral signatures.
O'Connell Rirchard J.
Pierrehumbert Raymond T.
Valencia Diana
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