Accretional heating as the major cause of compositional differences among meteorite parent bodies,the Moon,and Earth

Accretional energy can be retained with sufficient efficiency in the outer layers of the Moon due to the considerable amount of debris falling back into large craters.Heating of meteorite parent bodies occurs mainly after their accretion, by destructive collisions. The heating was generally not sufficient to differentiate the parent bodies completely so that iron meteorites would originate from the mantle, rather than from the core of a meteorite parent body. Assuming that the Earth and Moon accreted from material of similar chemical composition, we suggest that only from the outer lunar shell is there a loss of gases and volatiles due to accretional melting. The Earth melted completely and degassing was efficient for the whole mass of the Earth leading to its ≈20% higher uncompressed mean density in comparison to the Moon. Because of its lower gravitational field, gases and volatiles escaped much more easily from the lunar atmosphere than from the terrestrial one, leading to the observed depletion in volatiles of the outer parts of the Moon.     

Early collisional heating of the Moon

It is shown that, because of the occurrence of fall-back craters, there could occur considerable heating of the Moon above the melting point of silicates during accretional time scales of order 10⁶–10⁸ yr.     

Late stages of planetary accretion

We derive first-order differential equations for the late stages of planetary accretion (planetesimal mass >10¹³ g). The effect of gravitational encounters, energy exchange, collisions, and gas drag has been included. Two simple models are discussed, namely, (i) when all planetesimals have the same mass and (ii) when there is one large planetesimal and numerous small planetesmals. Gravitational two-body encounters are modeled according to Chandrasekhar's classical theory from stellar dynamics. It is shown that the velocity increase due to mutual encounters can be modeled according to the simple theory of random flights. We find analytical equations for the average velocity decrease due to collisions. Gas drag, if present, is modeled in averaged form up to the first order in the eccentricities and inclinations of the planetesimals. Characteristic time scales for the formation of the terrestrial planets are found for the most favorable models to be of order 10⁸ year. The calculated mass of rock and ice of the giant planets is too low as compared to the observed one. This difficulty of our model could be overcome by assuming a several times larger surface density, an enlarged accretion cross section, and gas accretion during the final stages of accretion of the solid cores of the giant planets. Analytical and numerical results are presebted, the evolutionary tracks showing satisfactory agreement with observations for some models.     

Mass loss in the plane circular restricted three-body problem: Application to the origin of the Trojans and of Pluto

The equations of the plane circular restricted three-body problem are integrated in the case of an exponential mass variation of the small primary m for a particle librating around the tringular point and for a satellite of m. For a mass variation by a factor of 20, the librational amplitude of the particle shows no appreciable variation. The satellite escapes towards the regions inside the orbit of m, provided that the mass loss rate is sufficiently slow. Extrapolating these results to the real solar system, it seems unlikely that Jupiter's Trojans are former Jovian sattelites which escaped because of mass loss of proto-Jupiter. It also seems improbable that Pluto escaped from Neptune due to a proto-Neptunian mass loss.     

On the theoretical possibility of the libration cloud

We show within the framework of the restricted three body problem that

1. Only in the immediate neighbourhood of the Lagrangian pointsL ₄ andL ₅ the distribution of a cloud of particles tends to become uniform under the influence of random stochastic perturbations. No consequences can be derived from this fact for a tendency of dispersion of clouds librating at arbitrary distances around the Lagrangian points.
2. From an elementary inspection of the Jacobi integral we cannot conclude that mutual completely inelastic collisions tend to drive the particles away from the vicinity of the libration points.

Finally the motion of a particle within the libration cloud, approximated as a resisting medium, is briefly examined.     

Effects of mechanical macrophyte control on suspended sediment concentrations in streams

Suspended sediment (SS) is an important pollutant in freshwater ecosystems and can be detrimental to fish communities. Although macrophytes mediate sediment deposition, little effort has been put into determining how their removal affects sediment resuspension. The present study examined the immediate and long-term impacts of mechanical macrophyte removal on SS concentrations in streams. The results of this study suggest that bed disturbance during mechanical excavation of macrophytes significantly increases SS in the short term, and concentrations were found to increase by as much as 15,687 mg L^–1 immediately after macrophyte removal. Significant long-term (77 day) increases in SS were also observed, indicating that without macrophytes, disturbed material is continually resuspended after excavation by fluvial processes. These results demonstrate that macrophyte removal can result in SS levels that have previously been shown to harm fish, and indicate that this activity may be more detrimental to fish than previously thought.