Internal Differentiation in Early-Accreting Planetesimals

Details Internal Differentiation in Early-Accreting Planetesimals Internal Differentiation in Early-Accreting Planetesimals

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.5203e&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #52.03

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Chondritic meteorites are unmelted, variably metamorphosed samples of the earliest solids of the solar system. A recent paleomagnetic study of CV chondrites suggests that though the chondrites themselves were not melted, their parent body was internally differentiated and produced a core magnetic dynamo.
Bodies that accreted before 1.3 to 3 Ma after CAIs likely contained sufficient 26Al to melt internally from the insulated cumulative effects of radiogenic heating. These bodies would melt from the interior out, sometimes forming an interior magma ocean under a solid, conductive, undifferentiated shell. This shell would consist of the same chondritic material that made up the bulk accreting body before melting began.
Simulations indicate that this model of chondrite meteorite genesis requires specific but reasonable conditions: The chondrites experienced metamorphism in the undifferentiated crust of an internally differentiated body of radius 250 km to 450 km, which likely accreted no later than 2.0 Ma after CAIs. This body could have produced a core dynamo lasting more than 10 Ma that left a thermoremanent magnetization in Allende.
Because of the limited lifetime of 26Al and the longer apparent period over which chondrite parent bodies were forming, many other parent bodies likely heated without significant melting. However, bodies that are internally differentiated may well exist undetected in the asteroid belt. The shapes and masses of 1 Ceres and 2 Pallas are consistent with differentiated interiors. Other internally differentiated asteroids may have lost their hydrostatic shapes through later impacts, but their surfaces may be irregular, space-weathered primitive material, perhaps with altered or differentiated material at the bottoms of the largest craters. This scenario can explain the mismatch between the enormous diversity (more than 130) of parent bodies represented by achondrites and the paucity (fewer than 10) of basaltic asteroids.
Funded by NSF Astronomy.

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