| Popis: |
– We investigate the hypothesis that many chondrules are frozen droplets of spray from impact plumes launched when thin-shelled, largely molten planetesimals collided at low speed during accretion. This scenario, here dubbed “splashing,” stems from evidence that such planetesimals, intensely heated by 26Al, were abundant in the protoplanetary disk when chondrules were being formed approximately 2 Myr after calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs), and that chondrites, far from sampling the earliest planetesimals, are made from material that accreted later, when 26Al could no longer induce melting. We show how “splashing” is reconcilable with many features of chondrules, including their ages, chemistry, peak temperatures, abundances, sizes, cooling rates, indented shapes, “relict” grains, igneous rims, and metal blebs, and is also reconcilable with features that challenge the conventional view that chondrules are flash-melted dust-clumps, particularly the high concentrations of Na and FeO in chondrules, but also including chondrule diversity, large phenocrysts, macrochondrules, scarcity of dust-clumps, and heating. We speculate that type I (FeO-poor) chondrules come from planetesimals that accreted early in the reduced, partially condensed, hot inner nebula, and that type II (FeO-rich) chondrules come from planetesimals that accreted in a later, or more distal, cool nebular setting where incorporation of water-ice with high Δ17O aided oxidation during heating. We propose that multiple collisions and repeated re-accretion of chondrules and other debris within restricted annular zones gave each chondrite group its distinctive properties, and led to so-called “complementarity” and metal depletion in chondrites. We suggest that differentiated meteorites are numerically rare compared with chondrites because their initially plentiful molten parent bodies were mostly destroyed during chondrule formation. |
Plný text