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What heated the parent meteorite planets?The plausibility of the two most wide discussed mechanisms, decay of short-lived Al-26 and solar wind induction heating, for heating the small planetesimals in which the meteorites formed are examined and shown to have significant problems. The main problem for the Al-26 decay mechanism is the fact that eucritic lavas, melted by the mysterious heating mechanism in some early planetesimal, did not contain enough Al-26 to decay to radiogenic Mg-26 when they erupted to their planetesimal surface and cooled. It is necessary to postulate that the lavas lingered underground while their Al-26 decayed away. The solar wind induction heat concept has the problem that astrophysical evidence has made is seem increasingly unlikely that an intense solar wind flux blew past planetesimals in the early solar system. Instead, it was probably collimated in the direction of the sun's poles by the persistence of the solar nebula during the T Tauri epoch.
Document ID
19920064071
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Authors
Wood, John A.
(Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Cambridge, MA, United States)
Pellas, Paul
(Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle Paris, France)
Date Acquired
August 15, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 1991
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Exploration
Accession Number
92A46695
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: CNRS-ATP-87-67-02
CONTRACT_GRANT: CNRS-ATP-88-37-07
CONTRACT_GRANT: NAG9-28
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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