The latest issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics (Vol 692, Dec 2024) seems to have a protoplanet theme:
Zhou, W-H. The binary Yarkovsky effect on the primary asteroid with applications to singly synchronous binary asteroids L2 202452146
Pinilla-Alonso, N. Licandro, J. Brunetto, R. et al. Unveiling the ice and gas nature of active centaur (2060) Chiron using the James Webb Space Telescope L11 202450124
Anderson, S. E. Rousselot, P. Jehin, E. et al. A comparative study of the blue comets C/1908 R1 (Morehouse) and C/2016 R2 (Pan-STARRS) A1 202450636
Ren, J. Wu, B. Hesse, M. A. et al. Surface dynamics of small fast-rotating asteroids: Analysis of possible regolith on asteroid 2016 HO3 A62 202451407
Kočiščák, S. Theodorsen, A. Mann, I. The distribution of the near-solar bound dust grains detected with Parker Solar Probe A68 202451846
Kral, Q. Huet, P. Bergez-Casalou, C. et al. An impact-free mechanism to deliver water to terrestrial planets and exoplanets A70 202451263
Ge, J. Zhang, X. Li, J. et al. Asteroid material classification based on multi-parameter constraints using artificial intelligence A100 202451971
Liu, S. Wang, X. Han, Y. et al. Possible origin of Mars-crossing asteroids and related dynamical properties of inner main-belt asteroids A144 202451162
Fraga, B. M. O. Bom, C. R. Santos, A. et al. Transient classifiers for Fink – Benchmarks for LSST A208 202450370
Note papers that I haven’t included above- ones on protoplanetary disks, newly-formed planets, dynamics of early, crowded systems, etc. all related to the planet-accretion process in young Systems. Somewhat relevant to this theme are Kočiščák et al. and Liu et al., but the big news (this month) is:
Kral et al. hypothesize a process for hydrating terrestrial (Earthlike) planets, despite those planets forming from basically dry (enstatite chondrite) material. In their view, a cloud/disk of hydrous material is orbiting a young star, along with the forming planets. ‘Swimming’ in this material is what hydrates the planets. And that hydrous material is… evaporites, from hydrous asteroids. It’s certainly interesting; we know only the broad brushstrokes of how planets and their systems form. (Certainly ours.) Neither I (nor anyone else) can definitively rule this scenario out. One of the big issues in planetology is how Earth got hydrated, and yet Venus and Mars are pretty dry. Of course, an ‘out’ is that Venus and Mars may have formed just as wet as Earth did, and then lost their water afterwards. That’s independent of any such cloud/disk of wet material before. Also, the authors state that the lower mass of Mercury and Mars means lower gravity, and lower amounts of anything captured from this birth cocoon. There are significant error bars on everything, of course; the authors admit this, and propose test criteria for further works.
Aside from Kral, we have letters/articles on specific objects- more “stamp collecting” than physics, especially in the case of comets which are difficult to observe. We have an “AI” paper (more like ML) on asteroids from Ge et al. And we have dust- dust from which planets/small bodies came, and dust to which small bodies (mostly comets but also asteroids, eventually) will return. Hmmm… this dust distribution sure looks like… a (formerly) viscous cloud, as proposed by Kral et al.!
Let’s close with Fraga et al. If it needs to be said, the Vera Rubin Observatory (formerly LSST) will collect terabytes of images per night. There’s simply no way a human- or even a team- can sift through it all. A first cut will consist of computer algorithms breaking the data stream into manageable chunks, and then subteams- supernovae people, galaxy people, etc., and yes, small-bodies people taking their data through yet more algorithms. With the imminent integration of the full Observatory, the algorithms must also fall into place. Fraga et al. brief us on metrics and ‘infrastructure’ for Rubin software.