Probabilities of collisions of bodies ejected from forming Earth with the terrestrial planets

TL;DR

This study calculates the probabilities of bodies ejected from Earth colliding with terrestrial planets, showing that some material can reach other planets and potentially deliver organic compounds, with collision likelihood depending on ejection velocities and angles.

Contribution

It provides new quantitative estimates of collision probabilities and dynamical lifetimes of ejected Earth material with terrestrial planets and Jupiter.

Findings

Approximately 20-30% of ejected bodies collide with Earth and Venus.

A small fraction (up to 8%) collide with Mercury and Mars.

Bodies ejected at lower velocities have higher collision probabilities.

Abstract

The motion of bodies ejected from the Earth was studied, and the probabilities of collisions of such bodies with the present terrestrial planets were calculated. The dependences of these probabilities on velocities, angles and points of ejection of bodies were studied. These dependences can be used in the models with different distributions of ejected material. On average, about a half and less than 10\% of initial ejected bodies remained moving in elliptical orbits in the Solar System after 10 and 100 Myr, respectively. A few ejected bodies collided with planets after 250 Myr. As dynamical lifetimes of bodies ejected from the Earth can reach hundreds of million years, a few percent of bodies ejected at the Chicxulub and Popigai events about 36-65 Myr ago can still move in the zone of the terrestrial planets and have small chances to collide with planets, including the Earth. The fraction of ejected bodies that collided with the Earth was greater for smaller ejection velocity. The fractions of bodies delivered to the Earth and Venus probably did not differ much for these planets and were about 0.2-0.3 each. Such obtained results testify in favour of that the upper layers of the Earth and Venus can contain similar material. The fractions of bodies ejected from the Earth that collided with Mercury and Mars did not exceed 0.08 and 0.025, respectively. The fractions of bodies collided with Jupiter were of the order of 0.001. In most calculations the fraction of bodies collided with the Sun was between 0.2 and 0.5. Depending on parameters of ejection, the fraction of bodies ejected into hyperbolic orbits could vary from 0 to 1. Small fractions of material ejected from the Earth can be found on other terrestrial planets and Jupiter, as the ejected bodies could collide with these planets. Bodies ejected from the Earth could deliver organic material to other celestial objects, e.g. to Mars.