4.56 billion years ago, our solar system began to form after the gravitational collapse of a piece of a giant molecular cloud. The protoplanetary disk spun around the sun and eventually merged into the planets we know today. Well, in these first moments of the solar system, a mysterious gap emerged, described as a “cosmic limit” and today it forms what represents the gap between Mars and Jupiter, which precisely divides the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and external (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).
Direct evidence of the gap
This has been described by a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), based on the analysis of ancient meteorites, fragments of asteroids that have fallen to Earth from space. Over the past decade, scientists have observed a curious division in the composition of meteorites that have reached Earth: carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous, but meteorites have rarely been found to exhibit both, an enigma known as an “isotopic dichotomy.” .
“Over the past decade, observations have shown that cavities, holes, and rings are common in the disks around other young stars . These are important, but poorly understood, signatures of the physical processes by which gas and dust transform into the sun and young planets, ”explains Benjamin Weiss, professor of planetary sciences in the Department of Earth Sciences, Atmospheric and Planetaria (EAPS) from MIT and co-author of the work published in the journal Science Advances.
Currently, this gap between Mars and Jupiter, where the asteroid belt is located, is 3.68 astronomical units (more than 550 million kilometers).
What is the cause of this mysterious gap?
It is unknown. One possibility is that Jupiter had something to do with it. As the gas giant took shape, its immense gravitational pull could have pushed the gas and dust outward, leaving space in the developing disk. Another explanation, according to experts, could have to do with the winds that emerge from the surface of the disk. The first planetary systems are governed by strong magnetic fields. When these fields interact with a rotating disk of gas and dust, they can produce winds powerful enough to blow material away, leaving space on the disk.
Be that as it may, this physical separation could have shaped the composition of the planets in our solar system , by preventing the material on both sides from interacting, hence those of the inner solar system are rocky and those of the outer solar system, gaseous .
“This gap is quite difficult to cross, and a planet would need a lot of external torque and momentum,” says lead author and EAPS graduate student Cauê Borlina. “This provides evidence that the formation of our planets was restricted to specific regions in the early solar system,” the expert continues.
Response to the isotopic dichotomy
“Gaps are common in protoplanetary systems, and now we show that we had one in our own solar system,” Borlina said. ” This answers this strange dichotomy that we see in meteorites and provides evidence that the gaps affect the composition of the planets.”
Referencia: Caue Borlina, Paleomagnetic Evidence for a Disk Substructure in the Early Solar System, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj6928. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj6928
