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Dissipation of the Primordial Terrestrial Atmosphere Due to Irradiation of Solar EUV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

Minoru Sekiya
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606, Japan
Kiyoshi Nakazawa
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606, Japan
Chushiro Hayashi
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606, Japan

Extract

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When the Earth had grown to the present mass through accretion of the planetesimals in the solar nebula, the Earth was surrounded by a dense primordial atmosphere which was mainly composed of hydrogen and helium (Hayashi et al. 1979). Mass of the atmosphere was about 1×1026 g. We investigate the dissipation of this atmosphere due to the irradiation of solar EUV. The effect of solar wind is neglected. We assume that the flow of the escaping gas is spherically symmetric and steady. We impose the boundary condition that the flow velocity go through a sonic point. The results show that the primordial atmosphere is dissipated within a period of 5 × 108 yrs, which is the upper limit imposed from the theory of the origin of the present terrestrial atmosphere (Hamano and Ozima 1978), as far as the solar EUV flux is more than two hundred times as large as the present one. In this case, the rare gases contained in the promordial atmosphere are also dissipated owing to the drag effect (Sekiya et al. 1980).

Type
Session 3: Origin of the Solar System
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1981 

References

Hayashi, C., Nakazawa, K. and Mizuno, H. 1979, Earth Planet Sci. Lett., 43, 22.Google Scholar
Hamano, Y. and Ozima, M. 1978, Advance in Earth and Planetary, 3, ed. Alexander, E.C. and Ozima, M. (Center for Academic Publ. Japan), 155.Google Scholar
Sekiya, M., Nakazawa, K. and Hayashi, C. 1980, Earth Planet Sci. Lett., to be published.Google Scholar