When Worlds Collide: Thermal Emission Spectra of Post-Giant-Impact Earths

Details When Worlds Collide: Thermal Emission Spectra of Post-Giant-Impact Earths When Worlds Collide: Thermal Emission Spectra of Post-Giant-Impact Earths

Sep 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011ess.....2.1705m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #2, #17.05

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The final assembly of terrestrial planets in our Solar System is now universally thought to have occurred through a series of giant impacts--essentially collisions between planets--spread out over some 30-50 million years. It likely takes at least 10 collisions between planets to make a Venus and an Earth, as not every collision results in a merger of worlds. In the aftermath of one of these collisions the surviving planet is hot and can remain hot for a long time. As first proposed by Stern (1994) the thermal emission of an Earth-mass planet caught in the afterglow of such a giant impact renders the planet far more detectable than at any other time. Given the statistics of giant impacts and the population of nearby young stars, a few such post-impact worlds may be seen by the next generation of ground-based coronagraphs on 30-m class telescopes. Miller-Ricci et al. (2009) presented the first model spectra of such worlds, but considered only a few possible atmospheric compositions. We have now computed the actual atmospheric composition expected over a molten surface lying at hundreds of bars along with self-consistent radiative-convective temperature profiles. While major absorbers include the expected water and CO2, other species--including in some cases O2-are also detectable. We will summarize the surprising atmospheric chemistry and emission spectra of such planets and will consider the prospects for detecting and characterizing these extreme worlds.

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