Chondrule formation in the radiative accretional shock

The physical, mineralogical, and isotopic properties of chondrules strongly indicate that they were formed by the rapid melting and resolidification of preexisting solids composed of primitive material. The chondrule precursors were heated to temperatures of about 1800 K in short high-temperature events, followed by cooling with a rate of 10(exp 2)-10(exp 3) K/hr. A heat input of about 1500 J/g is required to heat chondrule precursors to such a temperature and melt them. Lightning discharges and flares in the solar nebula, and heating of the chondrule precursors by friction with gas decelerated in the accretional shock or in a shock (of unspecified origin) within the solar nebula, have been discussed as possible mechanisms for chondrule formation. One advantage of chondrule formation in large-scale shocks is that a lot of dust material can be processed. An accretional shock, which is produced by infalling gas of the presolar cloud when it collides with the solar nebula, belongs to this type of shock. In 1984 Wood considered the possibility of chondrule formation in the accretional shock by heating of chondrule precursors by gas drag. He concluded that the density in the accreting material is much lower than needed to melt silicates at the distance of the asteroid belt if the accreting matter had the cosmic ratio of dust to gas, and the mass of the solar nebula did not exceed 2 solar mass units. Melting of chondrule precursors is difficult because of their effective cooling by thermal radiation. Suppression of the radiative cooling of individual grains in dust swarms, which are opaque to thermal emission, was considered to be the only possible means of chondrule formation in solar nebula shocks. Previous models of solid grain melting in solar nebula shocks have neglected gas cooling behind the shock front, i.e., they considered adiabatic shocks. In this paper we show that large dust grains could be heated much stronger than was supposed by these authors, because of effects associated with the gas cooling.