ASU: Fragments of Asteroids May Have Jumped the "Jupiter Gap"

[bystander]

Fragments of Asteroids May Have Jumped the Gap in the Early Solar System
Arizona State University | 2020 Aug 06

ALMA image of the protoplanetary disk around HL Tauri. The dark rings are gaps in the dust and gas-rich protoplanetary disk, likely due to the formation of planets. These gaps may be similar to the disk gap thought to be formed by the formation of Jupiter in our protoplanetary disk. Credit: ESO/ALMA

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Using some cosmic detective work, a team of researchers has found evidence that tiny pieces of asteroids from the inner solar system may have crossed a gap to the outer solar system, a feat once thought to be unlikely.

About 1 million years after the start of the solar system, it is thought that while Jupiter’s core formed, it created a gap in the protoplanetary disk (the disk of dense gas and dust surrounding the sun). Called the “Jupiter Gap,” this divide severely limited material from getting across it and is thought to have created two distinct reservoirs in the disk.

Against the odds, however, a team of researchers ... have found evidence in meteorites that tiny fragments of asteroids from the inner solar system crossed the Jupiter Gap into the outer solar system. ... The research team ... were inspired to conduct this study because of samples brought back from NASA’s comet sample return mission, Stardust.

These samples hinted that comets could contain material that migrated from the inner solar system to the outer reaches where comets formed and suggested that the migration of material may have been more widespread in the early solar system than previously thought. ...

Using electron probe microanalyzers (to obtain high resolution images of the samples and major and minor element data of individual minerals) and a secondary ion mass spectrometer (used to analyze the isotopic composition of samples), the team was able to provide direct evidence for a complex mixing of materials between the inner and outer solar system. ...

Outward Migration of Chondrule Fragments in the Early Solar System:
O-Isotopic Evidence for Rocky Material Crossing the Jupiter Gap? ~ Devin L. Schrader et al

• Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 282:133 (Aug 2020) DOI: 10.1016/j.gca.2020.05.014

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