1112.3113 (Henry Throop et al.)
Henry Throop, John Bally
If Jupiter and the Sun both formed directly from the same well-mixed
proto-solar nebula, then their atmospheric compositions should be similar.
However, direct sampling of Jupiter's troposphere indicates that it is enriched
in elements such as C, N, S, Ar, Kr, and Xe by 2-6 times relative to the Sun.
Most existing models to explain this enrichment require an extremely cold
proto-solar nebula which allows these heavy elements to condense, and cannot
easily explain the observed variations between these species. We find that
Jupiter's atmospheric composition may be explained if the Solar System's disk
heterogeneously accretes small amounts of enriched material such as supernova
ejecta from the interstellar medium during Jupiter's formation. Our results are
similar to, but substantially larger than, isotopic anomalies in terrestrial
material that indicate the Solar System formed from multiple distinct
reservoirs of material simultaneously with one or more nearby supernovae. Such
temporal and spatial heterogeneities could have been common at the time of the
Solar System's formation, rather than the cloud having a purely well-mixed
`solar nebula' composition.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3113
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