Papers

Impact-generated crater rays are well-documented on the Moon, with most appearing as high-albedo streaks extending radially from a crater's center. On Mars, however, crater rays are significantly rarer and discernible only through thermal imaging due to their lower thermal inertia compared to surrounding terrain. This study presents the first comparative analysis between the lengths of Martian and lunar crater rays, including lunar albedo rays and cold spots, which are ray-like thermal anomalies associated with many of the youngest lunar craters. Our findings indicate that both Martian crater rays and lunar cold spots extend significantly farther than lunar albedo rays, with lengths an order of magnitude greater for craters of equivalent diameter. Furthermore, we propose a connection between the formation mechanisms of Martian crater rays and lunar cold spots based on their thermal properties. By integrating thermal rays into existing ejecta models, we refine the understanding of crater-ray formation and suggest that Martian crater rays and lunar cold spots may share a similar formation mechanism via secondary cratering processes. Advancing knowledge of these features has implications for impact dynamics and surface evolution across planetary bodies.

Protoplanetary discs evolve around newly-formed stars through an interplay of infall from surrounding turbulent cloud material, accretion towards the young star, and outflow driven mass-loss. It has been challenging to determine if discs are fed predominantly through infall along the disc midplane, or along the poles, and if accretion occurs in a steady or burst-like fashion. Here, we present a suite of 3D ideal magnetohydrodynamical simulations of protoplanetary disc formation and evolution in a dynamic, large-scale molecular cloud environment using the adaptive mesh refinement framework DISPATCH. We focus on nine stellar systems, where we resolve discs down to a scale of 0.8 au. Across the sample, stellar accretion proceeds at rates of $\sim$10$^{-5}$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$ over 10$^{5}$ yr, with significant variability. Discs grow to 100 au scales and remain gravitationally stable in time, with disc-to-star mass ratios below 10 %. Transient high-density streamers, with 10 kyr infall times, can drive anisotropic mass delivery at rates comparable to the background accretion flow. Their interaction with discs typically results in a temporary reduction of the disc size by half, and disc mass by 40 %. During later quiescent disc evolution stages ($t\gtrsim$50 kyr), accretion predominantly occurs through the midplane and disc surface layers. This is associated with the development of a toroidal magnetic field morphology, which includes field reversals across both disc surfaces. In this way, the full disc mass reservoir is replenished on 10 kyr-timescales. These findings support that the outer parts of very young discs, when well-ionised and close to the ideal MHD regime, are not yet conducive to planet formation, due to high replenishment rates, strong turbulence, and disruptive streamer infall events.

We report observations of comet 81P/Wild 2, target of the Stardust sample return mission, on UT 2023 March 20 and 24 at a heliocentric distance ($r_H$) of 1.85 au using the NIRSpec and MIRI integral field unit spectrographs on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This study is the first compositional comparison between JWST remote-sensing spectroscopy of a solar system object against terrestrial analysis of its returned samples. We securely detected molecular emission from H$_2$O, CH$_4$, C$_2$H$_6$, CH$_3$OH, CO, CO$_2$, $^{13}$CO$_2$, OCS, HCN, and CN and find molecular abundances consistent within $2\sigma$ with those reported during previous perihelion passages. The water ortho-to-para ratio was $2.76\pm0.05$, and the $^{12}$CO$_2$/$^{13}$CO$_2$ ratio was $85\pm4$. Thermal emission from the nucleus and dust was detected and modeled, providing an effective nucleus radius of $1.77\pm0.04$ km and a dust composition (relative mass fraction of the submicron grains) of $\sim36\%$ amorphous carbon, $\sim25\%$ amorphous Mg:Fe olivine, $\sim23\%$ Mg-rich crystalline olivine, and $\sim15\%$ amorphous Mg:Fe pyroxene. The crystalline mass fraction of the sub-micron grains in the coma was $0.362\pm0.003$. Comparison of the JWST-derived thermal model against the fine-grained materials in Stardust returned samples demonstrates complementarity between the missions, with each most sensitive to a different population of the coma dust grains.

In this paper, we establish the exponential convergence of Laskar's pioneering frequency map analysis, strictly improving upon classical polynomial bounds. By utilizing appropriately chosen weighting functions, we achieve such exponential rates in the analytic quasi-periodic regime for frequency vectors satisfying Diophantine or Brjuno nonresonance conditions. Furthermore, we extend the theoretical framework beyond the analytic quasi-periodic regime into the analytic almost periodic setting. By employing and generalizing Bourgain's framework, we accommodate a much broader class of anisotropic spatial structures. These results yield the first unified theory of exponential convergence for frequency map analysis, revealing the interplay among analyticity, spatial structures, nonresonance conditions, the choice of weighting functions, and convergence rates. This framework has important implications for applications in fields including celestial mechanics. Moreover, the novel techniques developed herein yield new insights into the study of weighted Birkhoff averages.

Ammonium salts may represent an important reservoir of volatile species in Solar system primitive bodies, but the question of how and when these salts can form during the star formation process remains unknown. In this paper, we use thermo-chemical models to study the formation of ammonium salts during the protoplanetary disk stage. We show that ammonium salts form efficiently in the inner disk midplane (i.e. $r \lesssim 50 $ au), inside the comet forming region. In this region, our model predicts that almost all the available nitrogen is in the form of salts (i.e. mainly in ammonium cyanate) at the surface of grains after evolving for 10 Myrs. For sulfur, we show that almost all the available S is in the form of ammonium hydrosulfide in the inner disk midplane. We show that inside $r\sim 30$ au, ammonium salt formation is enhanced by a cosmic-ray-driven sink effect that progressively converts gas-phase CO and N$_2$ into carbon dioxide and salts, respectively, at the surface of grains on a timescale $\gtrsim 1$ Myr. This impacts the location of the CO and N$_2$ radial snowlines which both shift closer to the star as a function of time.

In the early Solar System, an isotopic dichotomy existed between non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (CC) planetesimals. Depending on the formation location of these planetesimals relative to condensation lines in the protoplanetary disk, NC and CC differentiated planetesimals could have had distinct redox states and water contents. However, the extent of these differences and the resulting accretion environments of NC and CC planetesimals are debated. Here, we use thermal evolution and dynamo generation models to explore the effect of planetesimal core size, a proxy for redox state, and mantle water content on planetesimal dynamo generation. We find that combinations of core size and water content consistent with different formation scenarios produce planetesimals with stark contrasts in both magnetic field strength and duration. By comparing our models to existing paleomagnetic data for NC planetesimals, we suggest these bodies formed with a small amount of water-ice and degassed efficiently during differentiation. Future paleomagnetic measurements could determine whether CC planetesimals degassed as efficiently as NC planetesimals and the number of planetesimal formation regions in the NC reservoir. Overall, we demonstrate that meteorite paleomagnetism combined with dynamo generation models provides novel insight into the accretion environments of planetesimals and the evolution of their water contents.