How did Jupiter's dilute core form and survive 4.5 billion years? · revision history
Revision 1
Accepted · first revision · record
- Title
- How did Jupiter's dilute core form and survive 4.5 billion years?
- Plain
- A giant collision or gradual accretion of rock and ice could have produced a spread-out core. It must also have resisted being mixed away by convection ever since.
- Precise
- Determine whether Jupiter's dilute core formed by gradual heavy-element deposition during accretion or by a giant impact, and whether it survives convective erosion and double-diffusive mixing over 4.5 Gyr. An answer is a formation-plus-evolution model producing the present Z(r) and consistent with the planet's luminosity and radius.
- Settled by
- Coupled formation and evolution simulations, including impact simulations with realistic equations of state, matching present Z(r).
- Kind
- well-posed
- Answer type
- mechanism
- References
- (empty)
- Literature status
- contested
- Status note
- 2024 to 2025 impact simulations (arXiv:2412.06094, arXiv:2503.23997) find giant impacts do not readily produce a lasting dilute core.
- Posed since
- (empty)