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Calcium signals in planetary embryos

The calcium-isotope composition of planetary bodies in the inner Solar System correlates with the masses of such objects. This finding could have implications for our understanding of how the Solar System formed.
  1. Alessandro Morbidelli

    1. Alessandro Morbidelli is at the Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur, CS 34229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France.

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For decades, researchers have debated how planetary bodies in the Solar System with diameters of more than a few hundred kilometres were formed. Current models1 suggest that such bodies accumulated (accreted) small particles known as pebbles that were drifting towards the Sun in a cloud of gas and dust called the protoplanetary disk. However, these models have difficulty in explaining the diverse composition of objects in the Solar System: if all such bodies grew by accretion from the same flow of pebbles, then why do they have different compositions? In a paper in Nature, Schiller et al.2 provide a possible answer to this question, on the basis of their observation that the composition of calcium isotopes in planetary bodies correlates with the masses of these bodies.

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Nature 555, 451-452 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-03144-1

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