In Situ Formation of Short Period Terrestrial Planets

短周期类地行星的原位形成

基本信息

批准号：
2006752
负责人：
Thomas Quinn
金额：
$ 45.13万
依托单位：
University of Washington
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2020
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2020-09-15 至 2024-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2006752&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Situ Formation Short Period Terrestrial

项目摘要

A team of scientists at the University of Washington will perform computer simulations of the formation of rocky planets around other stars. The idea that rocky planets in our own Solar System were formed from much smaller bodies explains many features of the Solar System. They will investigate whether this same idea can successfully explain the formation of the planetary systems found around other stars. Their results will address whether our own Solar System is an outlier in how it formed. The study will focus on the systems of planets very close to low mass stars, which are the most common of type of planetary system discovered. This program will allow university students to gain experience in high performance computing and the handling of “big data”. Some of the work will be done in small projects for undergraduate students participating in the University of Washington's Pre-Major in Astronomy Program (PreMAP). PreMAP provides under-represented students in STEM with research opportunities in astronomy.To date, planetary Systems with Tightly-packed Inner Planets (STIPs) are the most statistically well-represented type of exoplanetary system, making them an excellent testbed for planet formation theories. However, planet formation models designed to reproduce the structure of our own Solar System typically fail to explain the seemingly exotic population of STIPs. A key component of the standard model of terrestrial planet formation is the growth from approximately kilometer size bodies to full sized planets, a regime where the physics is dominated by gravitational interactions and collisions between bodies. The team will use a recently enhanced, highly scalable particle code to follow the evolution of planetesimals on short period orbits as they interact gravitationally and collide. The results from these simulations will then be passed to a symplectic particle code to follow the late stages of planet formation for many millions of dynamical times. Using planetesimal compositions motivated by protoplanetary disk chemistry models, compositions of the terrestrial planets that result will be predicted, allowing future observations observations of the atmospheric composition of STIPs with James Webb Space Telescope to validate or falsify the possibility of in situ formation. Additionally, the gravitational influence of an outer giant companion during the accretion process will be considered, which may provide ways to infer the presence of an undetected giant companion from the orbital and compositional properties of the terrestrial planetsThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

华盛顿大学的一组科学家将对其他恒星周围的岩石行星的形成进行计算机模拟，他们将研究太阳系中的岩石行星是由更小的天体形成的这一想法。同样的想法是否可以成功解释在其他恒星周围发现的行星系统的形成，他们的结果将解决我们的太阳系在其形成过程中是否是一个异常值。这项研究将集中于非常接近低质量恒星的行星系统。，这是最常见的类型该项目将使大学生获得高性能计算和处理“大数据”的经验，其中一些工作将在参加华盛顿大学天文学预科课程的本科生中完成。 PreMAP 为 STEM 领域代表性不足的学生提供天文学研究机会。迄今为止，紧密堆积内行星 (STIP) 的行星系统是技术上最具代表性的系外行星类型。然而，旨在重现太阳系结构的行星形成模型通常无法解释看似奇异的 STIP 群体。类地行星形成标准模型的一个关键组成部分是。从大约千米大小的物体到全尺寸行星的生长，在这种情况下，物理现象主要是物体之间的引力相互作用和碰撞，该团队将使用最近增强的、高度可扩展的粒子代码来跟踪星子在短期内的演化。然后，这些模拟的结果将被传递到辛粒子代码，以使用由原行星盘化学模型驱动的行星组成来跟踪行星形成的后期阶段。由此产生的类地行星将被预测，从而允许未来用詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜观测 STIP 的大气成分，以验证或证伪原地形成的可能性。将考虑吸积过程中外部巨伴星的引力影响，这可能提供从类地行星的轨道和成分特性推断未被发现的巨伴星存在的方法。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为值得支持通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。