A protoplanet is a large planetary embryo that originated within a protoplanetary disk and has undergone internal melting to produce a differentiated interior. Protoplanets are thought to form out of kilometer-sized planetesimals that gravitationally perturb each other's orbits and collide, gradually coalescing into the dominant planets.
A protoplanet is a large planetary embryo that originated within a protoplanetary disk and has undergone internal melting to produce a differentiated...
the mass of the asteroid belt. Vesta is the only known remaining rocky protoplanet (with a differentiated interior) of the kind that formed the terrestrial...
AU, and again from 13 AU out to a few hundred AU, with evidence for a protoplanet forming at a distance of around 47 AU. Estimated to be less than 10 million...
asteroid to have been discovered, after Ceres, and is a likely remnant protoplanet. Like Ceres, it is believed to have a mineral composition similar to...
through mutual gravity, enormously aiding further growth into moon-sized protoplanets. Smaller bodies must instead rely on Brownian motion or turbulence to...
solar nebula as a group of planetesimals, the smaller precursors of the protoplanets. However, between Mars and Jupiter gravitational perturbations from Jupiter...
attracted each other, coalescing to form ever larger bodies. Hundreds of protoplanets may have existed in the early Solar System, but they either merged or...
may be many protoplanets orbiting the star or each other, but over time many will collide, either to form a larger, combined protoplanet or release material...
filaments cooled into numerous, tiny, solid planetesimals and a few larger protoplanets. This model received favorable support for about 3 decades, but passed...
accretion, the disk formed clumps of matter that, with time, became protoplanets. The radiation pressure of the solar wind then expelled most of the unaccreted...
process, which continues for several million years, but after the forming protoplanet reaches about 30 Earth masses (ME) it accelerates and proceeds in a runaway...
planets. Several protoplanet candidates have been suggested in the literature starting from 2014. Nonetheless, a particular protoplanet candidate detected...
formed the Sun, and the dust grains collected together to form the first protoplanets. As the planets grew, some of them eventually accreted enough matter...
condensed into the oceans, augmented by water and ice from asteroids, protoplanets, and comets. Sufficient water to fill the oceans may have been on Earth...
scientists reported that, according to computer simulations, remnants of a protoplanet, named Theia, could be inside the Earth, left over from a collision with...
dynamical friction between the protoplanet and the protoplanetary disk causes energy to be transferred from the protoplanet to the disk. This results in...
distinct signature for each Solar System body. If Theia had been a separate protoplanet, it probably would have had a different oxygen isotopic signature than...
Sahara Desert in Algeria. It is believed to be a fragment of a chondritic protoplanet that is over 4.566 billion years old, and is believed to be the oldest...
epoch, the inner Solar System was populated by 50–100 Moon-to-Mars-sized protoplanets. Further growth was possible only because these bodies collided and merged...
accretion is far more problematic. The escape velocity for the small protoplanets about 20 astronomical units (AU) from the center of the Solar System...
separated binary stars often disrupt the discs of rocky grains from which protoplanets form. On the other hand, other simulations suggest that the presence...
least partly differentiated interiors, and are thought to be surviving protoplanets. The vast majority, however, are much smaller and are irregularly shaped;...
momentum of other large debris created the means by which kilometer-sized protoplanets began to form, orbiting the nebular center. The center of the nebula...
complex debris disk containing a large planet or brown dwarf and possible protoplanet. Two further star systems have been found to have planets. The constellation...
Observatory's Very Large Telescope. PDS 70b was the first confirmed protoplanet to be directly imaged. The "PDS" in this star's name stands for Pico...
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