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Forming Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in Few Million Years by Core Accretion

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 نشر من قبل Andrea Fortier
 تاريخ النشر 2009
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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Giant planet formation process is still not completely understood. The current most accepted paradigm, the core instability model, explains several observed properties of the solar systems giant planets but, to date, has faced difficulties to account for a formation time shorter than the observational estimates of protoplanetary disks lifetimes, especially for the cases of Uranus and Neptune. In the context of this model, and considering a recently proposed primordial solar system orbital structure, we performed numerical calculations of giant planet formation. Our results show that if accreted planetesimals follow a size distribution in which most of the mass lies in 30-100 meter sized bodies, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may have formed according to the nucleated instability scenario. The formation of each planet occurs within the time constraints and they end up with core masses in good agreement with present estimations.



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