Mercurian impact ejecta: Meterorites and mantle

TL;DR

This study examines Mercury's impact ejecta, revealing its high-speed escape, potential for Earth transfer, and implications for Mercury's mantle re-accumulation, with findings on transfer efficiency and re-accretion timescales.

Contribution

It provides new calculations of Mercury ejecta transfer rates to Earth and Venus, and insights into mantle re-accumulation timescales in giant-impact scenarios.

Findings

Several percent of Mercury ejecta reach Earth within 30 Myr.

Mercury ejecta leave the planet faster than other planets, increasing transfer likelihood.

Re-accretion of ejected mantle material can occur within 2 Myr, affecting planetary formation models.

Abstract

We have examined the fate of impact ejecta liberated from the surface of Mercury due to impacts by comets or asteroids, in order to study (1) meteorite transfer to Earth, and (2) re-accumulation of an expelled mantle in giant-impact scenarios seeking to explain Mercury's large core. In the context of meteorite transfer, we note that Mercury's impact ejecta leave the planet's surface much faster (on average) than other planet's in the Solar System because it is the only planet where impact speeds routinely range from 5-20 times the planet's escape speed. Thus, a large fraction of mercurian ejecta may reach heliocentric orbit with speeds sufficiently high for Earth-crossing orbits to exist immediately after impact, resulting in larger fractions of the ejecta reaching Earth as meteorites. We calculate the delivery rate to Earth on a time scale of 30 Myr and show that several percent of the high-speed ejecta reach Earth (a factor of -3 less than typical launches from Mars); this is one to two orders of magnitude more efficient than previous estimates. Similar quantities of material reach Venus. These calculations also yield measurements of the re-accretion time scale of material ejected from Mercury in a putative giant impact (assuming gravity is dominant). For mercurian ejecta escaping the gravitational reach of the planet with excess speeds equal to Mercury's escape speed, about one third of ejecta re-accretes in as little as 2 Myr. Thus collisional stripping of a silicate proto-mercurian mantle can only work effectively if the liberated mantle material remains in small enough particles that radiation forces can drag them into the Sun on time scale of a few million years, or Mercury would simply re-accrete the material.