New insight into the Solar System’s transition disk phase provided by the unusual meteorite Isheyevo
Melissa A. Morris, Laurence A. J. Garvie, L. Paul Knauth
The Astrophysical Journal Letters
ApJ 801 L22. doi:10.1088/2041-8205/801/2/L22
Received 4 Dezember 2014, accepted for publication 30 Januar 2015. Published 9 März 2015.
We show that the Isheyevo meteorite contains the first definitive evidence for a transition disk stage in our Solar System. Isheyevo belongs to a class of metal-rich meteorites whose components have been dated at almost 5 Myr after the first solids in the Solar System, and exhibits unique sedimentary layers that imply formation through gentle sedimentation. We show that such layering can occur via gentle sweep-up of material found in the impact plume resulting from the collision of two planetesimals. Such sweep-up requires gas densities consistent with observed transition disks. As such, Isheyevo presents the first evidence of our own transition disk and provides new constraints on the evolution of our solar nebula.
