Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gvh9x Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T00:45:54.392Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ejection of Bodies from the Solar System in the Course of the Accumulation of the Giant Planets and the Formation of the Cometary Cloud

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

V. S. Safronov*
Affiliation:
O. Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth, Moscow, U.S.S.R.

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The theory of planetary accumulation leads quite definitely to the conclusion that the formation of Oort's cometary cloud is the result of ejection of bodies to the outermost parts of the solar system due to encounters with the giant planets during their growth. Uranus and Neptune could have grown to their present dimensions only if the initial mass of solid material in their zones were substantially larger than that of these planets. The relative velocities of the bodies were increased through perturbations by the planetary embryos, and on reaching the escape velocity they would start to be ejected. Our concept of this process differs from that suggested by Öpik by the assumption that Jupiter and Saturn accreted hydrogen, not in solid but in gaseous state, and by the introduction of a more effective mechanism for the interaction with several embryos. In their final stages the embryos ejected amounts of mass an order of magnitude higher than the amounts accreted. Most of the mass was ejected into interstellar space by Jupiter, but the cometary cloud was created mainly by Neptune. The mass of the cloud is estimated to be about three times that of the Earth.

Type
Part V/Origin and Evolution of Comets
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1972 

References

Bondi, H. and Hoyle, F.: 1944, Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc. 104, 273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bondi, H.: 1952, Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. Soc. 112, 195.Google Scholar
Oort, J. H.: 1950, Bull. Astron. Inst. Neth. 11, 91.Google Scholar
Oort, J. H.: 1951, Observatory 71, 129.Google Scholar
Öpik, E. J.: 1970, Moon 1, 487.Google Scholar
Safronov, V. S.: 1969, Ehvolyutsiya Doplanetnogo Oblaka i Obrazovanie Zemli i Planet , Nauka, Moscow.Google Scholar
Schatzman, E.: 1967, Ann. Astrophys. 30, 963.Google Scholar