Retention of Water in Terrestrial Magma Oceans and Carbon-rich Early Atmospheres

Impact Generation of Methane-rich Atmospheres on Early Terrestrial Planets

Water loss from terrestrial planets with \(CO_2\)-rich atmospheres

Water photolysis and hydrogen loss from the upper atmospheres of terrestrial planets is of fundamental importance to climate evolution but remains poorly understood in general. Here we present a range of calculations we performed to study the dependence of water loss rates from terrestrial planets on a range of atmospheric and external parameters. We show that CO2 can only cause significant wat...

Shear viscosity and diffusion in liquid MgSiO3: Transport properties and implications for terrestrial planet magma oceans

Molecular dynamics simulations using a pair-wise additive potential are implemented to investigate self-diffusion (Mg, Si, and O) and shear viscosity of liquid MgSiO3 in the density-temperaturepressure range 2350–5300 kg/m3, 2500–5000 K, and 0–140 GPa, respectively. Self-diffusivity and shear viscosity are described by modified Arrhenian expressions, which feature a pressure-dependent activatio...

Magma Oceans in the Inner Solar System

Theory and observations point to the occurrence of magma ponds or oceans in the early evolution of terrestrial planets and in many early-accreting planetesimals. The apparent ubiquity of melting during giant accretionary impacts suggests that silicate and metallic material may be processed through multiplemagma oceans before reaching solidity in a planet. The processes of magma ocean formation ...

Superrotation in Terrestrial Atmospheres

Atmospheric superrotation with prograde equatorial winds and an equatorial angular momentum maximum is ubiquitous in planetary atmospheres. It is clear that eddy fluxes of angular momentum toward the equator are necessary to generate it. But under what conditions superrotation arises has remained unclear. This paper presents simulations and a scaling theory that establish conditions under which...