Metal-silicate mixing in planetesimal collisions

¹ State Key Laboratory for Mineral Deposits Research & Lunar and Planetary Science Institute, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, PR China
e-mail: hhui@nju.edu.cn
² Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 10, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
e-mail: ch.schaefer@uni-tuebingen.de
³ CAS Center for Excellence in Comparative Planetology, Hefei, 230026, PR China
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of Earth and Planetary Physics, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, PR China

Received: 22 August 2023
Accepted: 12 April 2024

Abstract

Aims. Impacts between differentiated planetesimals are ubiquitous in protoplanetary discs and may mix materials from the core, mantle, and crust of planetesimals, thus forming stony-iron meteorites. The surface composition of the asteroid (16) Psyche represents a mixture of metal and non-metal components. However, the velocities, angles, and outcome regimes of impacts that mixed metal and silicate from different layers of planetesimals are debated. Our aim is to investigate the impacts between planetesimals that can mix large amounts of metal and silicate, and the mechanism of stony-iron meteorite formation.

Methods. We used smooth particle hydrodynamics to simulate the impacts between differentiated planetesimals with various initial conditions that span different outcome regimes. In our simulations, the material strength was included and the effects of the states of planetesimal cores were studied. Using a statistical approach, we quantitatively analysed the distributions of metal and silicate after impacts.

Results. Our simulations modelled the mass, depth, and sources of the metal–silicate mixture in different impact conditions. Our results suggest that the molten cores in planetesimals could facilitate mixing of metal and silicate. Large amounts of the metal–silicate mixture could be produced by low-energy accretional impacts and high-energy erosive impacts in the largest impact remnant, and by hit-and-run and erosive impacts in the second-largest impact remnant. After impact, most of the metal-silicate mixture was buried at depth, consistent with the low cooling rates of stony-iron meteorites. Our results indicate that mesosiderites potentially formed in an erosive impact, while pallasites potentially formed in an accretional or hit-and-run impact. The mixing of metal and non-metal components on Psyche may also be the result of impacts.