Monarchic Growth of Giant Planets

In the previous post, I outlined the basic mechanism of how I thought the giant planets formed, and how their mechanism of formation put them at certain distances from the sun. Given that, like everyone else, I assign Jupiter to the snow point, in which case the other planets are where they ought to be. But that raises the question, why one planet in a zone? Let’s take a closer look at this mechanism.

In the standard mechanism, dust accretes into objects by some unknown mechanism, and does this essentially based on collision probability, and so the disk progresses with a distribution of roughly equal sized objects that collide under the same rules, and eventually become what is called planetesimals, which are about the size of the classical asteroid. (I say classical because as we get better at this, we are discovering a huge number of much smaller “asteroids”, and we have the problem of what does the word asteroid mean?) This process continues, and eventually we get Mars-sized objects called oligarchs, or embryos, then these collide to get planets. The size of the planet depends on how many oligarchs collide, thus fewer collided to make Venus than Earth, and Mars is just one oligarch. I believe this is wrong for four reasons: the first is, giants cannot grow fast enough; second, the dust is still there in 30 My old disks; the collision energies should break up the bodies at any given size because collisions form craters, not hills; the system should be totally mixed up, but isotope evidence shows that bodies seem to have accreted solely from the material at roughly their own distance from the sun.

There is an alternative called monarchic growth, in which, if one body can get a hundred times bigger than any of the others, it alone grows by devouring the others. For this to work, we need initial accretion to be possible, but not extremely probable from dust collisions. Given that we see disks by their dust that are estimated to be up to 30 My old, that seems a reasonable condition. Then, once it starts, we need a mechanism that makes further accretion inevitable, that is, when dust collides, it sticks. The mechanism I consider to be most likely (caveat – I developed it so I am biased) is as follows.

As dust comes into an appropriate temperature zone, then collisions transfer their kinetic energy into heat that melts an ice at the point of contact, and when it quickly refreezes, the dust particles are fused to the larger body. So accretion occurs a little below the melting temperature, and the probability of sticking falls off as the distance from that appropriate zone increases, but there is no sharp boundary. The biggest body will be in the appropriate zone because most collisions will lead to sticking, and once the body gets to be of an appropriate size, maybe as little as a meter sized, it goes into a Keplerian orbit. The gas and dust is going slower, due to gas drag (which is why the star is accreting) so the body in the optimal zone accretes all the dust and larger objects it collides with. Until the body gets sufficiently large gravitationally, collisions have low relative velocity, so the impact energy is modest.

Once it gets gravitationally bigger, it will accrete the other bodies that are at similar radial distance. The reason is that if everything is in circular orbits, orbits slightly further from the star have longer periodic times, in part because they move slightly slower, and in part because they have slightly further to go, so the larger body catches up with them and its gravity pulls the smaller body in. Unless it has exactly the same radial distance from the star, they will pass very closely and if one has enough gravity to attract the other, they will collide. Suppose there are two bodies at the same radial distance. That too is gravitationally unstable once they get sufficiently large. All interactions do not lead to collisions, and it is possible that one can be thrown inwards while the other goes outwards, and the one going in may circularise somewhere else closer to the star. In this instance, Ceres has a density very similar to the moons of Jupiter, and it is possible that it started life in the Jovian region, came inwards, and then finished accreting material from its new zone.

The net result of this is that a major body grows, while smaller bodies form further away, trailing off with distance, then there is a zone where nothing accretes, until further out there is the next accretion zone. Such zones get further away as you get further from the star because the temperature gradient decreases. That is partly why Neptune has a Kuiper Belt outside it. The inner planets do not because with a giant on each side, the gravity causes them to be cleaned out. This means that after the system becomes settled, a lot of residues start bombing the planet. This requires what could be called a “Great Bombardment”, but it means each system gets a bombardment mainly of its own composition, and there could be no significant bombardment with bodies from another system. This means the bombardment would have the same chemical composition as the planet itself.

Accordingly, we have a prediction. Is it right? It is hard to tell on Earth because while Earth almost certainly had such a bombardment, plate tectonics has altered the surface so much. Nevertheless, the fact the Moon has the same isotopes as Earth, and Earth has been churned but the Moon has not, is at least minor support. There is, of course, a second prediction. There seem to be many who assume the interior of the Jovian satellites will have much nitrogen. I predict very little. There will be some through adsorption of ammonia onto dust, and since ammonia binds more strongly than neon, then perhaps there will be very modest levels, but the absence of such material in the atmosphere convinces me it will be very modest.

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The Formation of the Giant Planets

Before I can discuss how we got the elements required for life delivered to Earth, it is necessary to work out how the planets formed, and why we have what we have. While the giant planets are almost certainly not going to have life, at least not as we would recognise it, they are important because what we have actually gives some important clues as to how planets form, and hence how common life will be, and why so many exoplanetary systems are so different from ours. The standard theory says a core accreted, then when it got sufficiently big, which calculations have at about 10 to 12 times the Earth mass it starts accreting gas in substantial amounts and it grows very slowly, the problem restricting growth being how it can compress its volume and get rid of the heat so generated. After a number of million years, its mass gets big enough, and it accretes everything that comes into range. Apart from the rather slow time the calculations give, that general description is almost certainly essentially correct. The reason we believe the core has to get to about 10 – 12 Earth masses before disk gases get accreted in serious amounts is because the evidence is the Neptune and Uranus have about 2 Earth masses of hydrogen and helium. So far, reasonably good. The fact that there is evidence the calculations are wrong is not damning; the fact that if the mechanism is not properly understood in close detail then the calculations will inevitably be wrong. The original calculations had these stages taking about 10 My to get to a planet the size of Jupiter. The very first calculations had it taking about a billion years to get to Neptune, but that obviously cannot be right because the disk gases had long gone before that. The real problem is how to get to the cores.

The standard theory says they started by the accretion of a distribution of planetesimals that were formed by the accretion of dust, and therefore were distributed according to the dust concentrations through the disk. There are two problems with this for me. First, we see these disks, and we see them because their dust scatters light. Some such disks are 30 My old and still dusty, so the dust itself is not rapidly accreting, altough often there are bands where there seems to be little dust. The second problem is that there is no recognized mechanism by which the dust can accrete and stick together strongly enough not to be disrupted by any other dustball that collides with it. Mathematics indicate that such dustballs, if they reach about 2 cm size, erode from gas motion relative to them.

So, how did the cores form? I think we have evidence from the fact their systems all have different compositions. The theory I outlined in my ebook Planetary Formation and Biogenesis goes like this. The dust that comes from deep space has a lot of very fluffy ice around it, and this has many pores. Within those pores, and around the ice, are the ices of other volatiles. (Such compound ices have been made in the lab, and their behaviour verified.) As the ices come in, the more volatile ones start subliming away at temperatures a little above their melting point, and hydrogen has even been maintained as an ice enclosed in water ice pores up to a little under 15 degrees K, which is well above its boiling point. So, as the ices come in and the disk gets gradually hotter, the ices selectively boil away. The relevant temperatures are: neon (~25 K); nitrogen and carbon monoxide (~65 K); argon and methane (~ 85); ammonia and methanol (~170 K); water (273 K).

What I suggest happened is the same mechanism that forms snowballs started planetary accretion. When snow is squeezed at a temperature a little below its triple point, the pressure causes localised melt fusion, and the particles stick together. In this case we have several ices entrained in the ice/dust, and I suggest the same happens for each ice. This has consequences. The temperature profile in these disks is observed to be where the temperature T is proportional to r^-0.75, r the distance from the star, with a significant variation, which is expected because the faster the gas comes in, or the warmer it was to start with, the further out a specific temperature will be found, while the denser the gas flow, the greater the temperature gradient. Now, because Jupiter is the biggest planet, and water ice is the most common single material, assume (like everyone else) that Jupiter is more or less where the water ice so fuses. If we assume the average disk temperature profile (actually r^-0.82 is better for what follows for our solar system) then the remaining giants are quite close to where they are supposed to be. So the mechanism is that ices come together, they hit, the collisional energy melts an ice in the impact zone such that they rapidly refreeze, and the particles stick together. To predict where the planets should be I put Jupiter at 5.2 A.U. as a water-ice core sets the constant of proportionality. The next ice is ammonia/methanol/water, which could melt between 164 – 195 ^oK, which suggests that Saturn should be between 7.8 – 9.6 A.U. Saturn has a semimajor axis of 9.5 A.U. The next ice out is methane/argon, with melting between 84 – 90 ^oK. The calculated position of Uranus is between 20-21.7 A.U., while the observed position is 19.2 A.U. The next ice, carbon monoxide/nitrogen melts between 63 – 68 ^oK, which predicts Neptune to be between 28.1 – 30.7 A.U., and Neptune has a semimajor axis of 30 A.U. Note that as they form, we excpect some movement through gravitational interactions and the effects of the gas.

This means the Jovian system is both nitrogen and carbon deficient, apart from Jupiter itself which accreted gas from the disk, and the very tenuous atmosphere of Europa is reported to actually have more sodium in it than nitrogen. Sorry, but no life under the ice at Europa because there is nothing much with which to have organic chemistry. The reason for the lack of atmosphere is the satellites have nothing in them that could form a gas at those temperatures. The major component is hydroxyl, from the photochemiclo deomposition of water, but this is extremely reactive and does not build up.

The Saturnian system has water, plus methanol and ammonia. The ammonia has been seen at Enceladus, and its decay product during UV radiation, nitrogen, is the main gas of Titan. The methane there will come from reactions of methanol and rocks. The Uranian system has methane and argon. Unfortunately the satellites are too small to have atmospheres, and Neptune’s satellites are similar, as while Triton has nitrogen volcanoes, it is probably a captured Kuiper Belt object, as it orbits Neptune the wrong way. However the atmosphere of Neptune has more nitrogen than expected from the accretion disk, whereas Uranus does not. More specific details are in the ebook, but in my opinion, the above describes reasonably well how these systems formed, and why they have the chemical composition we see. The Kuiper belt objects are the same as the core of Neptune, and are essentially a “tail” of the accretion process.

Finally, the perceptive will notice the possibility of two further zones of accretion. Further out, there will be a zone where neon trapped in ice might accrete, and even further out, because hydrogen can be trapped in ice even up to about 15 K, a hydrogen accretion zone where the liquid hydrogen dissolves neon, which then refreezes. The latter is not impossible. There are exoplanets a few hundred A.U. from the star, or, say, over ten times further than Neptune. On the other hand, there is a further mechanism that could form them, namely collapse of the disk, which presumably starts the star. So I should be able to predict where this planet 9 is? That is not so easy because the temperature of the disk follows the above relationship only approximately, and when we get down to these low temperatures, any deviation, including the initial temperature of the gas (which in the above relation is taken as zero, but it isn’t) suddenly becomes important. My published estimate for a neon-based planet is at a hundred A.U., with a possible minus 30 and a plus fifty A.U. Not exactly helpful. If I knew thie initial temperature, and the rate of heat loss from the disk by radiation at those distances I could be far more precise.

Was there an Initial Atmosphere from Accretion?

One of the problems with modern science is that once a paradigm has been selected, a layer of “authorities” is set up, and unless the scientist adopts the paradigm, little notice is taken of him or her. This is where conferences become important, because there is an audience that is more or less required to listen. The problem then for the person who has a different view is to show why that view is important enough to be considered. The barrier is rightly high. A new theory MUST do something the old one did not do, and it must not be contradicted by known facts. As I said, a high barrier.

In the previous post, I argued that the chemicals required for life did not come from carbonaceous chondrites or comets, and that is against standard thought. Part of the reason this view is held is that the gases had to come from somewhere, so from where? There are two obvious possible answers. The first is the gases were accreted with the planet as an atmosphere. In this hypothesis, the Earth formed while the disk gases were still there and simple gravity held them. Once the accretion disk was removed by the star, the hydrogen and helium were lost to space because Earth’s gravity was not strong enough, but other gases were retained. This possibility is usually rejected, and in this case the rejection is sound.

The first part of the proposition was almost certainly correct. Gases would have been accreted from the stellar disk, even on rocky planets, and these gases were largely hydrogen and helium. The next part is also correct. Once the disk gases were removed, that hydrogen and helium would be lost to space because Earth’s gravity was not strong enough to hold it. However, the question then is, how was it lost? As it happens, insufficient gravity was not the primary cause, and the loss was much faster than simply seeping off into space. Early in the life of a new star there are vicious solar winds and extreme UV radiation. It is generally accepted that such radiation would boil off the hydrogen and helium, and these would be lost so quickly that the other gases would be removed by hydrodynamic drag, and only some of the very heavier gases, such as krypton and xenon could remain. There is evidence to support this proposal, in that for krypton and xenon higher levels of heavier isotopes are observed. This would happen if most of these gases were removed from the top of the atmosphere, and since the lighter isotopes would preferentially find their way there, they would be removed preferentially. Since this is not observed for neon or argon isotopes, the argument is that all neon and argon in the atmosphere was lost this way, and if so, all nitrogen and carbon oxides, together with all water in the atmosphere would be lost. Basically, apart from the amount of krypton and xenon currently in the atmosphere, there would be no other gases. The standard theory of planetary formation has it that the Earth was a ball of magma, and if so, all water on the surface would be in the gas phase, so for quite some time Earth would be a dry lump of rock with an atmosphere that had a pressure that would be so low only the best vacuum pumps today could match it.

There could be the objection that maybe the star was not that active and we did retain some gases. After all, we weren’t around to check. Can you see why not? I’ll give the reason shortly. However, if we accept that the gases could not have come from the accretion disk, the other alternative is they came from below the ground, i.e. they were emitted by volacanic activity. How does that stand up?

One possibility might be that gases, including water, were adsorbed on the dust, then subsequently emitted by volcanoes. You might protest that if the Earth was a magma ocean, all that water would be immediately ejected from the silicates as a gas, but it turns out that while water is insoluble in silica at surface pressures, at pressures of 5000 atmospheres, granitic magma can dissolve up to 10% water at 1100 degrees C, at least according to Wikipedia. Irrespective of the accuracy of the figures, high temperature silicates under pressure most certainly dissolve water, and it probably hydrolyses the silicate structure and makes it far less viscous. It has been estimated that the water remaining in the mantle is 100 times greater than the current oceans so there is no problem in expecting that the oceans were initially emitted by volcanic activity. As an aside, deep in the mantle the pressures are far greater than 5000 atmospheres. This water is also likely to be very important for another reason, namely reducing the viscosity and lowering the magma density. This assists pull subduction, where the dry, or drier, basalt from the surface is denser than the other material around it and hence descends into the mantle. If the water were not there, we would not have plate tectonics, and if there were no plate tectonics, there would be no recycling of carbon dioxide, so eventually all the carbon dioxide on the surface would be converted to lime and there would be nothing for plants to use. End of life!

However, we know that our atmospheric gases were not primarily adsorbed as dust. How do we know that? In the accretion disk the number of nitrogen atoms is roughly the same as the number of neon atoms, and their heats of adsorption on dust are roughly the same. The only plausible physical means of separating them in the accretion disk is selective sublimation from ice, but ice simply could not survive where Earth formed. So, if our nitrogen came from the disk by simple physical means, then we would have roughly the same amount of neon in our atmosphere as nitrogen. We don’t, and the amount of neon we have is a measure of the amount of gas we have from such adsorption. Neon is present at 0.0018%, which is not very much.

So, in answer to the initial question, for a period there was effectively no atmosphere. To go any further we have to consider how the planets formed, and as some may suspect, I do not accept the standard theory for reasons that will become apparent in the next post.

Meanwhile, may I remind readers that my ebooks on Smashwords are on discount through July. Links to novels:

Puppeteer: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69696

‘Bot War: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/677836

Troubles: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/174203

Meanwhile, if you want to know scientifically about biofuels:

Biofuels: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/454344

Origin of the Rocky Planet Water, Carbon and Nitrogen

The most basic requirement for life to start is a supply of the necessary chemicals, mainly water, reduced carbon and reduced nitrogen on a planet suitable for life. The word reduced means the elements are at least partly bound with hydrogen. Methane and ammonia are reduced, but so are hydrocarbons, and aminoacids are at least partly reduced. The standard theory of planetary formation has it (wrongly, in my opinion) that none of these are found on a rocky planet and have to come from either comets, or carbonaceous asteroids. So, why am I certain this is wrong? There are four requirements that must be met. The first is, the material delivered must be the same as the proposed source; the second is they must come in the same proportions, the third is the delivery method must leave the solar system as it is now, and the fourth is that other things that should have happened must have.

As it happens, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen are not the same through the solar system. Each exists in more than one isotope (different isotopes have different numbers of neutrons), and the mix of isotopes in an element varies in radial distance from the star. Thus comets from beyond Neptune have far too much deuterium compared with hydrogen. There are mechanisms by which you can enhance the D/H ratio, such as UV radiation breaking bonds involving hydrogen, and hydrogen escaping to space. The chemical bonds to deuterium tend to be several kJ/mol. stronger than bonds to hydrogen. The chemical bond strength is actually the same, but the lighter hydrogen has more zero point energy so it more easily breaks and gets lost to space. So while you can increase the deuterium to hydrogen ratio, there is no known way to decrease it by natural causes. The comets around Jupiter also have more deuterium than our water, so they cannot be the source. The chondrites have the same D/H ratio as our water, which has encouraged people to believe that is where our water came from, but the nitrogen in the chondrites has too much 15N, so it cannot be the source of our nitrogen. Further, the isotope ratios of certain heavy elements such as osmium do not match those on Earth. Interestingly, it has been argued that if the material was subducted and mixed in the mantle, it would be just possible. Given that the mantle mixes very poorly and the main sources of osmium now come from very ancient plutonic extrusions, I have doubts on that.

If we look at the proportions, if comets delivered the water or carbon, we should have five times more nitrogen, and twenty thousand times more argon. Comets from the Jupiter zone get around this excess by having no significant nitrogen or argon, and insufficient carbon. For chondrites, there should be four times as much carbon and nitrogen to account for the hydrogen and chlorine on Earth. If these volatiles did come from chondrites, Earth has to be struck by at least 10^23 kg of material (that is, ten followed by 23 zeros). Now, if we accept that these chondrites don’t have some steering system, based on area the Moon should have been struck by about 7×10^21 kg, which is approximately 9.5% of the Moon’s mass. The Moon does not subduct such material, and the moon rocks we have found have exactly the same isotope ratios as Earth. That mass of material is just not there. Further, the lunar anorthosite is magmatic in origin and hence primordial for the Moon, and would retain its original isotope ratios, which should give a set of isotopes that so not involve the late veneer, if it occurred at all.

The third problem is that we are asked to believe that there was a narrow zone in the asteroid belt that showered a deluge of asteroids onto the rocky planets, but for no good reason they did not accrete into anything there, and while this was going on, they did not disturb the asteroids that remain, nor did they disturb or collide with asteroids closer to the star, which now is most of them. The hypothesis requires a huge amount of asteroids formed in a narrow region for no good reason. Some argue the gravitational effect of Jupiter dislodged them, but the orbits of such asteroids ARE stable. Gravitational acceleration is independent of the body’s mass, and the remaining asteroids are quite untroubled. (The Equivalence Principle – all bodies fall at the same rate, other than when air resistance applies.)

Associated with this problem is there is a number of elements like tungsten that dissolve in liquid iron. The justification for this huge barrage of asteroids (called the late veneer) is that when Earth differentiated, the iron would have dissolved these elements and taken them to the core. However, they, and iron, are here, so it is argued something must have brought them later. But wait. For the isotope ratios this asteroid material has to be subducted; for them to be on the continents, they must not be subducted. We need to be self-consistent.

Finally, what should have happened? If all the volatiles came from these carbonaceous chondrites, the various planets should have the same ratio of volatiles, should they not? However, the water/carbon ratio of Earth appears to be more than 2 orders of magnitude greater than that originally on Venus, while the original water/carbon ratio of Mars is unclear, as neither are fully accounted for. The N/C ratio of Earth and Venus is 1% and 3.5% respectively. The N/C ratio of Mars is two orders of magnitude lower than 1-2%. Thus if the atmospheres came from carbonaceous chondrites:

Only the Earth is struck by large wet planetesimals,

Venus is struck by asteroidal bodies or chondrites that are rich in C and especially rich in N and are approximately 3 orders of magnitude drier than the large wet planetesimals,

Either Earth is struck by a low proportion of relatively dry asteroidal bodies or chondrites that are rich in C and especially rich in N and by the large wet planetesimals having moderate levels of C and essentially no N, or the very large wet planetesimals have moderate amounts of carbon and lower amounts of nitrogen as the dry asteroidal bodies or chondrites, and Earth is not struck by the bodies that struck Venus,

Mars is struck only infrequently by a third type of asteroidal body or chondrite that is relatively wet but is very nitrogen deficient, and this does not strike the other bodies in significant amounts,

The Moon is struck by nothing,

See why I find this hard to swallow? Of course, these elements had to come from somewhere, so where? That is for a later post. In the meantime, see why I think science has at times lost hold of its methodology? It is almost as if people are too afraid to go against the establishment.