(ORDO NEWS) — Of all the rocky inner planets in the solar system, Mercury is the strangest. Not only does it have the lowest mass, but compared to its size, it also has the largest core.
This presents a serious problem for modeling the process of planet formation. The fact is that it is difficult to form such a large core without growing a proportionally large planet with it.
Recently, a team of astronomers explored several possibilities to explain Mercury’s strange properties by running simulations of the formation of the solar system.
In the early days of the solar system, instead of a neat row of planets, we had a protoplanetary disk of gas and dust.
Embedded in this disc were dozens of planetesimals that eventually collided, merged and grew to become planets.
Astronomers believe that the interior of the protoplanetary disk was probably missing material. Also in this young system, the giant planets have migrated from where they originally formed.
As these giant planets moved, they destabilized the inner disk, potentially removing even more material.
Given the above, astronomers have been able to construct a history of Mercury’s formation.
Initially, the inner protoplanetary disk contained many planetesimals, but as the giant planets moved and migrated, they took with them a lot of the material from which the planets were built.
the resulting planetesimals collided with each other, as a result of which a lot of heavy metals were ejected onto the planet located closer to the center of the protoplanetary disk.
This is how the large core of Mercury was formed.
Even though the models were able to reflect the size of Mercury’s core, the simulations were still unable to correctly determine the planet’s total mass.
The simulations produced a Mercury that was two to four times as massive as it actually is.
The question of how Mercury came into existence remains open.
Astronomers suspect that the chemical properties of the protoplanetary disk need to be studied more closely, especially by focusing on how dust particles can stick together and survive the intense radiation in Mercury’s orbit.
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