Sign on

SAO/NASA ADS Astronomy Abstract Service

· Find Similar Abstracts (with default settings below)
· Electronic Refereed Journal Article (HTML)
· Full Refereed Journal Article (PDF/Postscript)
· arXiv e-print (arXiv:astro-ph/0610093)
· References in the article
· Citations to the Article (5) (Citation History)
· Refereed Citations to the Article
· Also-Read Articles (Reads History)
·
· Translate This Page
Title:
The Effect of Semicollisional Accretion on Planetary Spins
Authors:
Schlichting, Hilke E.; Sari, Re'em
Affiliation:
AA(California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA; , ), AB(California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA; , )
Publication:
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 658, Issue 1, pp. 593-597. (ApJ Homepage)
Publication Date:
03/2007
Origin:
UCP
ApJ Keywords:
Planets and Satellites: Formation, Solar System: Formation
DOI:
10.1086/511129
Bibliographic Code:
2007ApJ...658..593S

Abstract

Planetesimal accretion during planet formation is usually treated as collisionless. Such accretion from a uniform and dynamically cold disk predicts protoplanets with slow retrograde rotation. However, if the building blocks of protoplanets, planetesimals, are small, of the order of a meter in size, then they are likely to collide within the protoplanet's sphere of gravitational influence, creating a prograde accretion disk around the protoplanet. The accretion of such a disk results in the formation of protoplanets spinning in the prograde sense with the maximal spin rate allowed before centrifugal forces break them apart. As a result of semicollisional accretion, the final spin of a planet after giant impacts is not completely random, but is biased toward prograde rotation. The eventual accretion of the remaining planetesimals in the post-giant-impact phase might again be in the semicollisional regime and delivers a significant amount of additional prograde angular momentum to the terrestrial planets. We suggest that in our solar system, semicollisional accretion gave rise to the preference for prograde rotation observed in the terrestrial planets and perhaps the largest asteroids.
Bibtex entry for this abstract   Preferred format for this abstract (see Preferences)
   

Find Similar Abstracts:

Use: Authors
Title
Keywords (in text query field)
Abstract Text
Return: Query Results Return    items starting with number
Query Form
Database: Astronomy
Physics
arXiv e-prints