Evidence for Magnetically-Driven Accretion in the Distal Solar System

Creators: Mansbach, Elias N.¹; Weiss, Benjamin P.¹; Lima, Eduardo A.¹; Sowell, Michael²; Kirschvink, Joseph L.^{2, 3}; Fu, Roger R.⁴; Cambioni, Saverio¹; Bai, Xue‐Ning⁵; Ream, Jodie B.¹; Anai, Chisato³; Kobayashi, Atsuko^{3, 6}; Hidaka, Hironori⁶

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. California Institute of Technology
3. Kochi Advanced Marine Core Research Institute, Kochi, Japan
4. Harvard University
5. Tsinghua University
6. Tokyo Institute of Technology

Abstract

Paleomagnetic measurements of meteorites indicate that magnetic fields existed in the inner solar nebula capable of driving accretion at rates similar to those observed for young stellar objects with protoplanetary disks. However, the field strength in the solar system beyond ∼7 astronomical units (AU) and its role in accretion remain poorly constrained. Returned samples from asteroid (162173) Ryugu offer the possibility of determining the nebular field intensity in this distal region. Here, we report paleomagnetic studies of three Ryugu particles which reveal that alteration occurred in the presence of a null or relatively weak (<15.8 μT) field within 3 million years (Ma) after solar system formation. This resolves previously contrasting reports that Ryugu's parent body experienced alteration in the presence of a strong (>80 μT) magnetic field and weak or null field (<3 μT). In addition, we re‐examine previous paleomagnetic and Mn‐Cr chronometry studies of three other distally‐sourced meteorites, Tagish Lake, Tarda, and Wisconsin Range 91600, which measured paleointensities of <0.9, <1.7 and 5.1 ± 4.5 μT respectively. While it was previously unclear whether these records were acquired while the nebula was present, our re‐analysis suggests that their records are sufficiently old (i.e., <3.5 Ma after solar system formation) to be nebular in origin. Collectively, these data demonstrate that the distal solar system nebular field, while faint, was likely still strong enough to drive accretion at rates like those observed in the inner solar system.

Copyright and License

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

We thank JAXA for providing samples of Ryugu for this study. We thank Motoo Ito and Yuhji Yamamoto for their assistance in demagnetizing C0006. We additionally thank John Biersteker and Richard Teague for enlightening conversations about spacecraft and astronomical detections of magnetic fields. We also thank Kevin McKeegan for fruitful discussions about Mn-Cr dating and Cauê Borlina for conversations about paleointensities. We thank as well Steve Desch and two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful reviews that improved the quality of the manuscript. BPW, EM, EAL, JBR, KM, and SC thank the NASA Laboratory Analysis for Returned Samples program (80NSSC20K0238) for funding.

Contributions

Conceptualization: Elias N. Mansbach, Benjamin P. Weiss, Saverio Cambioni, Xue‐Ning Bai, Jodie B. Ream.
Formal analysis: Elias N. Mansbach, Benjamin P. Weiss, Eduardo A. Lima, Michael Sowell, Joseph L. Kirschvink, Roger R. Fu, Saverio Cambioni.
Funding acquisition: Elias N. Mansbach, Benjamin P. Weiss, Saverio Cambioni, Jodie B. Ream.
Investigation: Elias N. Mansbach, Eduardo A. Lima, Michael Sowell, Chisato Anai, Atsuko Kobayashi, Hironori Hidaka.

Data Availability

Data needed to evaluate the conclusions presented in this paper can be found in two locations: (a) Raw magnetization data files for A0397 and C0085 are available on the Magnetics Information Consortium (MagIC) data set at https://earthref.org/MagIC/19927 (Mansbach et al., 2024b); and (b) Demagnetization data for C0006 and SQUID maps (.mat) files are available via Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SPNKFF (Mansbach et al., 2024a).

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AGU Advances - 2024 - Mansbach - Evidence for Magnetically‐Driven Accretion in the Distal Solar System.pdf

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