Sun And solar system start like a cloud of dust Wich comes from old supernova. IT should build on Gravity of heavier stuff like iron, gold, lead, uran,Mercury etc. In the center. Like our planet have high concentration of heavy elements, mostly iron. Should not be the same case with every other planet even more with stars? Instead i read of metal hydrogen in core of Jupiter And fusion of hydrogen in Sun. Should not they be full of heavy stuff And the light stuff float out?
In: Planetary Science
Most of the matter in the universe is hydrogen. For large objects like Jupiter or the sun the vast majority of the matter inside them is hydrogen as well. There are heavier elements in the core of both Jupiter and the sun, but those heavier elements are outnumbered by the massive amounts of hydrogen, so the core of both of these bodies is mostly hydrogen.
The heavier elements are much much less abundant than hydrogen and helium, so analogously the crystallization point race where dust accumulates into planets would be won by the abundance of material.
But actually the sun accumulated that first hence why its 99% of the mass of the solar system and generally purely hydrogen and helium, and once the sun hits a certain temperature for fusion it inflates a stellar windstream envelope which pushes the dust away from planetary accretion disks, which should have fully formed multiple planets by that point which will stop growing from loose dust and instead rely on impacts with other bodies.
The cloud of gas that formed the solar system is mostly hydrogen and helium with other elements accounting for less than 2% of its mass. This is reflected by the compositions of both the sun and of Jupiter. When the solar system formed, however, the heat and solar wind from the young sun drove most of the hydrogen and helium out of the inner solar system, leaving behind mostly rock and metal.
When the sun (containing 99.8% of the solar system’s mass) formed, the compression heated its interior to millions of degrees. Everything is plasma at those temperatures so all the other elements just stayed mixed in a plasma that was already mostly hydrogen and helium.
Jupiter is thought to have a core composed at least partly of rock and metal, but it appears that it is still mixed in with the metallic hydrogen. Jupiter’s core is not as hot as the sun’s, but it is still much hotter than Earth’s.
There are heavy elements in the gas giants too, not just a lot compared to the amount of hydrogen and helium. We are not sure the exact amount but some will be there.
The explanation is when the planets started to form within about 4 AU distance from the sun it was too hot for the compounds with low melting points to solids and accumulate. 1 AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun. Mars is at 1.5 AU, the astoir belt most at 2- 3.5 AU and Juptier is at 5 AU
Light material can be blown away by the solar wind, it would over time move farther out in the Solar System, and finally what did not end up in plants was blown out to interstellar space and planets stopped growing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System#Solar_system_birth_environment
It was to warm for water to remain on Earth during it formation- We are not completely sure how the water goes here. By mass, the water on earth is about 0.02 %
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth
Jupiter has a mass 317 times that of Earth. Earth is is 1/3 oxygen, 1/3 iron, and another heavy element the remaining 1/3 is elements like silicon and magnesium that are in between. If the same amount of Iron exists in Jupiter as in Earth is is only 0,1% of its mass. We have a relatively good idea of what is in the upper part of the atmosphere but not sure exactly what is deep in the planets. https://bigthink.com/13-8/jupiter-core-mystery/
The reason there is fusion in the sun and not Jupiter is because Jupiter is smaller. The core never reaches the temperature and pressure for fusion to start. The amount that is required is approximately 0,08 solar masses of hydrogen (8% of the mass of the sun) Jupiter’s mass is 1/1047 of the sun, which is just below 0.1%. So it would need to be 80 times larger for fusion to start and it becoming a star.
When you go to bed and pull a blanket over you, it’s the perfect temperature.
With Jupiter, you’ve pulled a lot of blankets, its uncomfortable, but you can handle it.
With the sun, you’ve pulled 1 too many blankets and now your freaking hot. So you start pushing out, but those blankets are heavy so you just spontaneously burst into flames.
For some context, the Sun has about 330 times the mass of the Earth in iron. Jupiter probably has about 14-18 Earth’s worth of rock and iron in its core. It’s just that the iron in the Sun is only ~0.14% of its total mass and that rock is only ~5% of Jupiter. Earth really is made of all the stuff leftover from the Sun, Jupiter, and the other gas giant planets. Earth is *tiny* and represents only 0.0003% of the mass in the solar system.
Metallic hydrogen is hydrogen crushed into the smallest possible volume, hydrogen naturally bonds with another hydrogen atom so you have H2 and if you were to imagine an atomic box 2 linked atoms take up a volume of a 2X2X2 cube, which in theory could contain 8 atoms of hydrogen, but H2 “occupies” all the 8 spaces of the cube. https://youtu.be/b-gCfHXNIVc
>Sun And solar system start like a cloud of dust Wich comes from old supernova.
That’s not entirely true. While there are some heavy particles from supernova, over 99% of the cloud was a mix of hydrogen & helium from the beginning of the universe.
For reference: in astronomy, metals are anything heavier than helium.
The reason there isn’t a high cencentration of metals throughout the solar system is because there’s not a lot of metals to begin with.
The sun alone is 99.8% of the total mass of the system. Jupiter alone is another 0.1%. Around 0.1% of the sun is metals, meaning that there are more metals in the sun than all the terrestrial planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets combined.
The real question is why there isn’t a lot of hydrogen and helium in the inner solar system. The answer is probably a combination of the planets being too small and the solar winds being too strong for the planets to hold on to it.
The outer gas giants all have cores (potentially of metals) more massive than Earth and are further away from the sun, so the solar winds are weaker. So, the giants have an easier time holding onto their hydrogen and helium.
Latest Answers