Isotopic trichotomy of main belt asteroids from implantation of outer solar system planetesimals

1David Nesvorný,2Nicolas Dauphas,3David Vokrouhlický,1Rogerio Deienno,4Timo Hopp
Earth and Planetary Science Letters 626, 118521 Link to Article [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2023.118521]
1Department of Space Studies, Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut St., Suite 300, Boulder, CO 80302, United States
2Origins Laboratory, Department of the Geophysical Sciences, The University of Chicago, 5734 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
3Institute of Astronomy, Charles University, V Holešovičkách 2, CZ-18000 Prague 8, Czech Republic
4Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Planetary Science Department, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Copyright Elsevier

Recent analyses of samples from asteroid (162173) Ryugu returned by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission suggest that Ryugu and CI chondrites formed in the same region of the protoplanetary disk, in a reservoir that was isolated from the source regions of other carbonaceous (C-type) asteroids. Here we conduct N-body simulations in which CI planetesimals are assumed to have formed in the Uranus/Neptune zone at ∼15–25 au from the Sun. We show that CI planetesimals are scattered by giant planets toward the asteroid belt where their orbits can be circularized by aerodynamic gas drag. We find that the dynamical implantation of CI asteroids from ∼15–25 au is very efficient with ∼5% of ∼100-km planetesimals reaching stable orbits in the asteroid belt by the end of the protoplanetary gas disk lifetime. The efficiency is reduced when planetesimal ablation is accounted for. The implanted population subsequently evolved by collisions and was depleted by dynamical instabilities. The model can explain why CIs are isotopically distinct from other C-type asteroids which presumably formed at ∼5–10 au.

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