Hi REB
Mars doesn't show many signs of being a core.
However Earth and Venus might. Marvin Herndon has suggested that the major terrestrials are from volatile-stripped "protoplanets" - semi-collapsed proto-Jovians, which then lost a lot of volatiles during the Sun's early active phases.
Other researchers - Lammer, Guillot and others - have modelled the hydrodynamic loss of H/He from Neptune-class planets. Within 1 AU the mass-loss is sufficient to strip a Neptune down to its "icy" core, but I doubt it would be stripped all the way.
Alternatively Michael Woolfson and John Dormand have modelled collisions between two sub-Jovians that strip them to their rocky cores. Sometimes one fragments and the other is expelled from the Solar System, but other simulations result in loss of volatiles and two intact cores. Mercury, Mars and Luna (or Theia) are former moons with partially missing mantles depending on their proximity to the crashing primaries.
Considering the large numbers of Jovians that get created by disk instability the early Solar System could've been a very busy place!
Adam
Space/Science » in reply to re: Mars - the core of a migrated gas giant?
re: Mars - the core of a migrated gas giant?
The whole thread (28 posts)
- The Dry Look
- seems similar to Nick H's views ..