Tag: Solar System

The chaotic early Solar System: when giant planets went berserk

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Readers of Earth-logs will be familiar with the way gravitational interactions between the planets that orbit the Sun control cyclical shifts in each other’s rotational and orbital behaviours. The best known are the three Milankovich cycles. The eccentricity of Earth’s orbit (deviation from a circular path) changes according to the varying gravitational pulls exerted by Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit the Sun, and is dominated by 100 ka cyclicity. The tilt (obliquity) of Earth’s rotational axis changes in 41 ka cycles.  The direction in which the axis points relative to the Sun varies with its precession which has a period of about 25.7 ka. Together they control the amount of solar heating that our planet receives, best shown by the current variation in glacial-interglacial cycles. But the phenomena predicted by Milutin Milankovich show up in palaeoclimatic changes back to at least the late Precambrian. Climate changes resulting from the gravitational effect of Mars have recently been detected with a 2.4 Ma period. But that steady carousel of planetary motions hasn’t always characterised the Solar System.

Cartoon showing planet formation in the early, unstable Solar System (Credit: Mark Garlick, Science Source)

Observations of other stars that reveal the presence of their own planetary systems show that some have giant planets in much closer orbits than those that circuit the Sun. Others occur at distances that extend as far as the orbital diameters as those in the Solar System: so perhaps giant planets can migrate. A possibility began to be discussed in the late 1990s that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – and a fifth now-vanished giant planet – were at the outset in neat, evenly-spaced and much closer orbits. But they were forced outwards later into more eccentric and generally askew orbits. In 2005, planetary astronomers gathered in Nice, France to ponder the possibilities. The outcome was the ‘Nice’ Model that suggested that a gravitational instability had once emerged, which set the Solar System in chaotic motion. It may even have flung gigantic masses, such as postulated fifth giant planets, into interstellar space. This upheaval may have been due to a rapid change in the overall distribution of mass in the Solar System, possibly involving gas and dust that had not yet accreted into other planets or their planetesimal precursors. Chaotic antics of monstrous bodies and shifts in their combined gravitational fields can barely be imagined: it was nothing like the staid and ever present Milankovich Effect. Geologists have reconstructed one gargantuan event that reset the chemistry of the early Earth when it collided with another body about the size of Mars. That  also flung off matter that became the Moon. Evidence from lunar and terrestrial zircon grains (see: Moon-forming impact dated; March 2009) suggests the collision occurred before 4.46 billion years ago (when parts of both eventually crystallised from magma oceans), Solar System having begun to form at around 4.57 Ga. Could formation of the Moon record the early planetary chaos? Others have suggested instead that the great upheaval was the Late Heavy Bombardment, between 4.1 and 3.8 Ga, which heavily cratered much of the lunar surface and those of moons orbiting the giant planets.

Another approach has been followed by Chrysa Avdellidou of the University of Leicester, UK and colleagues from France and the US (Avdellidoli, C. et al. 2024. Dating the Solar System’s giant planet orbital instability using enstatite meteorites. Science, v. 384, p. 348-352; DOI: 10.1126/science.adg8092) after discovery of a new family of asteroids: named after its largest member Athor. The composition of their surfaces, from telescopic spectra, closely matches that of EL enstatite chondrite meteorites. Dating these meteorites should show when their parent asteroids – presumably the Athors – formed.  Using argon and xenon isotopes Mario Trieloff  and colleagues from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in showed that the materials in EL enstatite chondrite meteorites were assembled a mere 2 Ma after the Solar System formed (Trieloff, M. et al. 2022. Evolution of the parent body of enstatite (EL) chondrites. Icarus, v. 373, article 114762; DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2021.114762). Be that as it may, that the evidence came from small meteorites shows that the parent body, estimated as having had a 240 to 420 km diameter, was shattered at some later time. Moreover, at that very early date such bodies would have contained a ready heat source in the form of a short-lived isotope of aluminium (26Al) which decays to stable 26Mg, with a half-life of 0.717 Ma. 26Al is thought to have been produced by a supernova that has been suggested to have triggered the formation of the Solar System. Excessive 26Mg is found in many meteorites, evidence for metamorphism formed by such radiogenic heat. They also record the history of their cooling.

Avdellidoli et al. estimate that the 240 to 420 km Athor parental planetesimal had slowly cooled for at least 60 Ma after it formed. When it was shattered, the small fragments would have cooled instantaneously to the temperature of interplanetary space – a few degrees above absolute zero (-273.2 °C). From this they deduce the age of the chaotic restructuring of the early Solar System to be at least 60 Ma after its formation. Other authors use similar reasoning from other chondritic meteorite classes to suggest it may have happened even earlier at 11 Ma. But there are other views for a considerably later migration of the giant planets and the havoc that they wrought. The only widely agreed date, in what seems to be an outbreak of wrangling among astronomers, is for the Moon-forming collision: 110 Ma after formation of the Solar System. For me, at least, that’s good-enough evidence for when system-wide chaos prevailed. The Late Heavy Bombardment between 4.1 and 3.8 Ga seems to require a different mechanism as it affected large bodies that still exist. It may have resulted from whatever formed the asteroid belt, for it was bodies within the range of sizes of the asteroids that did the damage, in both the Inner and Outer Solar System.

See also: The instability at the beginning of the solar system. MSUToday, 27 April 2022: Voosen, P. 2024. Giant planets ran amok soon after the Solar System’s birth. Science, v. 384 news article eadp8889; DOI: 10.1126/science.adp8889

Ocean-floor sediments reveal the influence of Mars on long-term climate cycles

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In 1976 three scientists from Columbia and Brown (USA) and Cambridge (UK) Universities published a paper that revolutionised the study of ancient climates (Hays J.D., Imbrie J. and Shackleton N.J. 1976. Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages. Science, v. 194, p. 1121-1132;  DOI: 10.1126/science.194.4270.1121). Using variations in oxygen isotopes from foraminifera through two cores of sediments beneath the floor of the southern Indian Ocean they verified Milutin Milankovich’s hypothesis of astronomical controls over Earth’s climate. This centred on changes in Earth’s orbital parameters induced by gravitational effects from the motions of other planets: its orbit’s eccentricity, and the tilt and precession of its rotational axis. Analysis of the frequency of isotopic variations in the resulting time series yielded Milankovich’s predictions of ~100, 41 and 21 ka periodicities respectively. The time spanned by the cores was that of the last 500 ka of the Pleistocene and thus the last 5 glacial-interglacial cycles. Subsequently, the same astronomical climate forcing  has been detected  for various climate-induced changes in the earlier sedimentary record, including the glacial cycles of the Carboniferous and Neoproterozoic, Jurassic climate changes due to oceanic methane emissions and many other types of cyclicity during the Phanerozoic.

One hemisphere of Mars captured by ESA’s Mars Express. Credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin /

As well as time series based on isotopic and other geochemical changes in marine cores, other variables such as thickness of turbidite beds or cyclical repetitions of short rock sequences such as the ‘cyclothems’ of Carboniferous age (repetitions of a  limestone, sandstone, soil, coal sequence) have also been subject to frequency analysis. Sedimentary features that have not been tried are gaps or hiatuses in stratigraphic sequences where strata are missing from a deep-sea sequence. These signify erosion of sediment due to vigorous bottom currents in sequences otherwise dominated by continuous deposition under low-energy conditions. Three geoscientists from the University of Sydney, Australia and the Sorbonne University, France, have subjected records of gaps in Cenozoic sedimentation from 293 deep-sea drill cores to time-series analysis to discover what such ‘big data’ might reveal as regards climate fluctuations on the order of millions of years (Dutkiewicz, A., Boulila, S. & Müller, R.D. 2024. Deep-sea hiatus record reveals orbital pacing by 2.4 Myr eccentricity grand cycles. Nature Communications, v. 15, article 1998; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46171-5).

In theory gravitational interrelationships between all the orbiting planets should have an effect on the orbital parameters of each other, and thus the amount of received solar radiation and changes in global climate. As well as the Milankovich effect, longer astronomical ‘grand cycles’ may therefore have been reflected somehow in Earth’s climatic history (Laskar, J. et al. 2004. A long-term numerical solution for the insolation quantities of the Earth. Astronomy & Astrophysics, v. 428, p. 261-285; DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20041335). Based on Laskar et al.’s calculations Adriana Dutkiewicz and colleagues sought evidence for two predicted ‘grand cycles’ that result from orbital interactions between Earth and Mars. These are a 2.4 Ma period in the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit and one of 1.2 Ma in the tilt of its axis.

The authors were able to detect cyclicity in the hiatus time series that is close to the 2.4 Ma Mars-induced waxing and waning of solar heating. Warming would increase mixing of ocean water through cyclones and hurricanes. That would then induce more energetic deep ocean currents and more erosion on the deep ocean floor: more gaps in sedimentation. Cooler conditions would ‘calm’ deep ocean currents so that deposition would outweigh evidence of erosion. The 1.2 Ma axial tilt cyclicity is not apparent in the data. Interestingly, the ~2.4 Ma cyclicity underwent a significant deviation at the Palaeocene-Eocene Boundary’ (56Ma), seemingly predicted by Laskar et al’s  astronomical solutions as a chaotic orbital transition between 56 and 53 Ma. Dutkiewicz et al. also chart the relations between the sedimentary-hiatus time series and major tectonic, oceanographic, and climatic changes during the Cenozoic Era, and found that terrestrial processes did disrupt the Mars-related orbital eccentricity cycles.

The findings suggest that long-term astronomical climate forcing needs to be borne in mind for better understanding the future response of the ocean to global warming. Also, if Mars had such an influence so must have Venus, which is more massive and closer. That remains to be investigated, and also the effects of the giant planets. In the very distant past there behaviour may have resulted in unimaginable astronomical changes. According to the bizarrely named Nice Model a back and forth shuffling of the Giant Planets was probably responsible for the Late Heavy Bombardment 4.1 to 3.8 billion years (Ga) ago. Such errant behaviour may even have triggered the flinging of some of the Sun’s original planetary complement out of the solar system and changed the outward order of the existing eight. Fortunately, the present planetary set-up seems to be stable …

See also: Dutkiewicz, A., & Müller, R. D. 2022. Deep-sea hiatuses track the vigor of Cenozoic ocean bottom currents. Geology, v. 50, p. 710–715; DOI: 10.1130/G49810.1; Mars drives deep-ocean circulation in Earth’s oceans, study suggests. Sci News, 13 March 2024.

Hydrogen and how the Earth formed

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A third piece with hydrogen as its focus in a couple of months? Well, from a galactic perspective there’s a lot of it about. Modern cosmology suggests that only 4.6% of the energy in the universe consists of elemental atoms made of protons, neutrons and electrons, dwarfed by dark energy and dark matter that are something of mystery. But of the more familiar energy equivalent, tangible matter (as in E=mc2), 74% of the universe is hydrogen, 24% is helium and the other 92 elements amount to just 2%. That tiny proportion of heavier elements was created by nucleosynthesis within stars from the two products of the Big Bang (H and He). Nuclear fusion reactions formed those with atomic numbers (protons in their nuclei) up to that of iron (26), whereas the heavier elements were created through neutron- and proton capture when the largest stars destroyed themselves cataclysmically as supernovae. Yet the planet whose surface we inhabit contains only minute amounts of helium and elemental hydrogen. Of course water at and beneath the surface, in the form of atmospheric vapour and locked within minerals retains some of the cosmically available hydrogen. But current estimates suggest that hydrogen accounts for a mere 0.03% of Earth’s mass. Despite the fact that some forms of radioactive decay generate alpha particles that become helium it forms a vanishingly small proportion of terrestrial mass.

The solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago by a complex gravitational accretion of the gas and dust of an interstellar cloud: mainly H and He. Its dynamic collapse resulted in gravitational potential energy being transformed into heat: in the case of the Sun, sufficient to set off self-sustaining nuclear fusion. As a body grows in this way so does its gravity and thus the speed needed for matter to escape from its pull (escape velocity). As temperature increases so does the speed at which atoms of each element vibrate; the lower the atomic mass the faster the vibration and the greater the chance of escape. So the ‘blend’ of elements that an astronomical body retains during its early evolution depends on its gravity and its surface temperature. The Sun is so massive that very little has escaped its pull, despite a surface temperature of about 5 to 6 thousand degrees Celsius. Its composition is thus close to the cosmic average. Those of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are not far short because of their large gravities and low surface temperatures. Even today, the smaller Inner Planets are unable to cling on to elemental hydrogen and helium and nearly all that is left of the matter from which they formed is the 2% of heavier cosmic elements locked into solids, liquids and gases.

Processes in the early solar system were far more complicated than they are today. In the mainly gaseous disc, from which the solar system evolved, gravity dragged matter towards its centre. That eventually ignited nuclear fusion of hydrogen to form our star. More remote from its gravitational pull vortices aggregated dust into bodies known as planetesimals that in turn accreted to larger protoplanets. Solar gravity dragged gas from the inner solar system leaving rocky protoplanets, whereas gas was able to be attracted to the surface of what became the gas giants where their gravity outweighed that of the far-off Sun. This was complicated by a sort of Milankovich Effect on steroids in which protoplanets continuously changed their orbits and underwent collisions. The best known of these was between the protoEarth and a Mars-sized body that formed the Earth-Moon system, both bodies having deep magma oceans as a result of the huge energy focussed on them by the collision. What may have happened to the protoplanet that became Earth before the Moon-forming collision has been addressed by three geoscientists at the University of California Los Angeles and the Carnegie Institution for Science Washington DC, USA (Young, E.D. et al. 2023. Earth shaped by primordial H2 atmospheres. Nature, v. 616, p. 306–311; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05823-0 [PDF request to: eyoung@epss.ucla.edu]).

A thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere’s interacting chemically with a protoplanet (left). A possible later stage (right) where iron oxide in the magma ocean of the Early Hadean after Moon formation oxidises a hydrogen atmosphere to form surface water (Credit: Sean Raymond 2023, Fig 1)

The focus of the work of Edward Young, Anat Shahar and Hilke Schlichting is directed at the possibility that the Earth-forming protoplanets originally retained thick hydrogen atmospheres. They use thermodynamic modelling of the equilibrium between hydrogen and silicate magma oceans that had resulted from the energy of their accretion. The authors’ main assumption is that insufficient time had elapsed during accretion for the protoplanets to cool and crystallise: a distinct possibility because loss of accretionary heat by thermal radiation would have been ‘blanketed’ by actively accreting dust and gas in orbit around the growing protoplanets. Effectively, the equilibrium would have been chemical in nature: reactions between highly reducing hydrogen and oxidised silicate melts or even vaporised rock evaporated from the very hot surface. The authors suggest that protoplanets bigger than Mars (0.2 to 0.3 times that of Earth) could retain a hydrogen-rich atmosphere long enough for the chemical reactions to come to a balance, despite high temperatures. There would have been no shortage of hydrogen at this early stage in solar system evolution: perhaps as much as 0.2% percent the mass of the Earth surrounding a protoplanet about half its present size.

Two outcomes may have emerged. Reaction between hydrogen and anhydrous silicates could produce H2O in amounts up to three times that currently in the Earth’s oceans, some locked in the magma ocean, some in the dense atmosphere. A by-product would have been iron oxide, giving the current mantle its oxidising properties known from the geochemistry of basaltic magmas.  Hydrogen might also have dissolved in molten iron alloys, thereby contributing to the nascent core. That second outcome would help explain why the modern core is less dense than expected for iron-nickel alloy, both solid and liquid. In fact densities calculated by geophysicists from the speeds of seismic waves that have travelled through the core are 5 to 10% percent lower than expected for the alloy. So the core must contain substantial amounts of elements with low atomic numbers.

Several other possibilities have been suggested to account for Earth’s abundance of water. Two popular ideas are comets arriving in the ‘settled’ times of the Hadean or by original accretion of hydrous chondrite meteorites, whose hydrogen isotope proportions match those of ocean water. Hydrogen as the light element needed in the core is but one possibility along with oxygen, sulfur and other ‘light’ elements. Also, the oxidising potential of the modern mantle may have resulted from several billion years of wet lithosphere being subducted. To paraphrase Sean Raymond (below), ‘other hypotheses are available’!

See also: Raymond, S.N. 2023. Earth’s molten youth had long-lasting consequences. Nature (News & Views), v. 616, p. 251-252; DOI: 10.1038/d41586-023-00979-1 [PDF request to: rayray.sean@gmail.com]

Planet Mercury and giant collisions

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Full-color image of from first MESSENGER flyby
Mercury’s sun-lit side from first MESSENGER flyby (credit: Wikipedia)

Mercury is quite different from the other three Terrestrial Planets, having a significantly higher density. So it must have a considerably larger metallic core than the others – estimated to make up about 70% of Mercury’s mass – and therefore has a far thinner silicate mantle. The other large body in the Inner Solar System, our Moon, is the opposite, having the greatest proportion of silicate mantle and a small core.

The presently favoured explanation for the Moon’s anomalous mass distribution is that it resulted from a giant collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars-sized planetary body. Moreover, planetary theorists have been postulating around 20 planetary ‘embryos’ in the most of which accreted to form Venus and Earth, the final terrestrial event being the Moon-forming collision, with smaller Mars and Mercury having been derived from the two remaining such bodies. For Mercury to have such an anomalously large metallic core has invited mega-collision as a possible cause, but with such a high energy that much of its original complement of silicate mantle failed to fall back after the event. Two planetary scientists from the Universities of Arizona, USA, and Berne, Switzerland, have modelled various scenarios for such an origin of the Sun’s closest companion (Asphaug, E. & Reuffer, A. 2014. Mercury and other iron-rich planetary bodies as relics of inefficient accretion. Nature Geoscience, published online, doi: 10.1038/NGEO2189).

Their favoured mechanism is what they term ‘hit-and-run’ collisions in the early Inner Solar System. In the case of Mercury, that may have been with a larger target planet that survived intact while proto-Mercury was blasted apart to lose much of it mantle on re-accretion. To survive eventual accretion into a larger planet the left-overs had to have ended up in an orbit that avoided further collisions. Maybe Mars had the same kind of lucky escape but one that left it with a greater proportion of silicates.

One possible scenario is that proto-Mercury was indeed the body that started the clock of the Earth-Moon system through a giant impact. Yet no-one will be satisfied with a simulation and some statistics. Only detailed geochemistry of returned samples can take us any further. The supposed Martian meteorites seem not to be compatible with such a model; at least one would expect there to have been a considerable stir in planetary-science circles if they were. For Mercury, it will be a long wait for a resolution by geochemists, probably yet to be conceived.

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Galactic controls

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English: Artist's conception of the Milky Way ...
Artists impression of the Milky Way viewed along its axis. Image via Wikipedia

Palaeoclimatologists are quite content that an important element in controlling the vagaries of climate is due to gravitational forces that cyclically perturb Earth’s orbit, it axial tilt and the way the axis of rotation wobbles in a similar manner to that of a gyroscope. The predictions about this by James Croll in the late 19th century, which were quantified by Milutin Milankovich during his incarceration during World War I, triumphed when the predicted periods of change were found in deep-sea floor sediment records in 1972. Authors of ideas that link Earth system changes  to the progress of the Solar system through the Milky Way galaxy haven’t had the same accolades. One of the first to suggest a galactic link was Joe Steiner (Steiner, J. 1967. The sequence of geological events and the dynamics of the Milky Way Galaxy. Journal of the  Geological Society of  Australia, v.  14, p. 99–132.) but his work is rarely credited.

There has been an upsurge of interest in the last decade or so. In a recent issue of New Scientist Stephen Battersby reviews what galactic ‘forcings’ may have accomplished during the 4.5 billion-year history of our world (Battersby, S. 2011. Earth odyssey. New Scientist, v. 212 (3 December issue), p. 42-45). Having formed probably much closer to the galactic centre than its current position the Solar System has drifted, perhaps even ‘surfed’ gravitationally, outwards to reach its present ‘suburban’ position in one of the spiral arms. There are regularities to the now stabilised orbital movements: once every 200 million years the Solar System completes a full orbit; this orbit wobbles across the hypothetical plane of the galactic disc by as much as 200 light years, moving with and against the Milky Way’s cosmic motion. It has proved impossible so far to detect any sign of the orbital 200 Ma periodicity in events on the Earth, and most attention has centred on the wobble.

Steiner suggested that this motion may have crossed different polarities of the galactic magnetic field, perhaps triggering the periodicity of geomagnetic  changes in polarity, but this now seems unlikely. However, his suggestion that glacial epochs, such as those in the Palaeo- and Neoproterozoic, at the end of the Palaeozoic Era and at present, may have resulted from the Solar System’s passage through dust and gas banding in the Milky Way continues to have its attractions (e.g. Pavlov, A.A. et al. 2005. Passing through a giant molecular cloud: “Snowball” glaciations produced by interstellar dust, Geophysical Research Letters, v. 32, p. L03705). The direction of motion relative to the Milky Way’s cosmic drift governs the exposure to cosmic rays that result from a kind of ‘bow-shock’ ahead of the galaxy

Stellar motion through the Milky Way is semi-independent so that from time to time the Solar System may have been sufficiently close to regions of dense dust and gas that nurture the formation of super-massive stars. These huge objects quickly evolve to end in supernovae, proximity to which would have exposed life to ‘hard’ X- and  γ-rays and would be trigger for mass extinction, for instance by accompanying cosmic rays in destroying the ozone protection from UV radiation from the Sun.

The dynamism of the Earth and the resulting complexity of its surface processes makes it a poor place to look for physical signs of galactic influences. No so the Moon: for almost 4.5 billion years it has been a passive receptor for virtually anything that the cosmos could fling at it, and so geologically inert that its surface layers may well preserve a complete ‘stratigraphic’ record of all kinds of process. Should lunar landings with geological capabilities once more prove economically possible, or politically useful, that hidden history could be read.

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