How our Solar System was formed and the planets
too, is complex and difficult to understand. Not only did it occur some 4.5
billion years before anyone was around to observe it, but it also involves complicated
computer simulations to reconstruct what might have occurred. Now researchers
from Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Lyon have
teamed up to generate a two-dimensional map of the dust chemistry that might
have been in the solar nebula - the dust cloud that made the Solar System.
In order to understand this, let’s get back to fundamentals.
The nebular hypothesis is the theory that the Solar System was made by the
collapse of a huge molecular cloud. This cloud had the mass and size to yield vital
molecules and dust, which then clumped and crashed together to ultimately produce
the Solar System as we know today.
Previous research has concentrated on
one-dimensional radial condensation structures, which only simulated one disc
layer of the solar nebula at a time. So there is a room for error, and produces
simulations that cannot sufficiently clarify the global chemistry of the
molecular cloud.
Though, this recent paper describes a model that
has two dimensions, permitting scientists to understand the chemistry behind
the system, along with addressing the different zones of denser elements inside
the solar nebula.
The inner Solar System was supposed to be too warm
for volatile molecules for instance water and methane to condense. Instead
planetesimals, or protoplanets nearby to our baby Sun would produce compounds
with high melting points, for example, metals and rocky silicates.
Those in the outer Solar System are believed to
have come from volatile molecules only in the chiller temperatures. It was supposed
that the dust dispersal would display the same patterns.
Nevertheless, when the recent 2D maps were created
by the scientists, it exposed that some high-temperature materials were spotted
at large distances from the Sun, and volatile materials were actually inside
the inner disk.
Lead researcher Francesco Pignatale, said "This
makes it possible to find relatively high temperature regions at larger
distances from the sun on the surface of the disk that are heated by the Sun’s
rays. We also find colder regions in the inner disk closer to the Sun. Here the high concentration of dust prevents
the stellar radiation from efficiently heating the local environment."
This type of study provides us a better aspect at
how our Solar System formed and the complications behind it. This study has
been issued in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
