Origin of the cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment period of the terrestrial planets
Abstract
The petrology record on the Moon suggests that a cataclysmic spike in the cratering rate occurred approximately 700 million years after the planets formed; this event is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB). Planetary formation theories cannot naturally account for an intense period of planetesimal bombardment so late in Solar System history. Several models have been proposed to explain a late impact spike, but none of them has been set within a self-consistent framework of Solar System evolution. Here we propose that the LHB was triggered by the rapid migration of the giant planets, which occurred after a long quiescent period. During this burst of migration, the planetesimal disk outside the orbits of the planets was destabilized, causing a sudden massive delivery of planetesimals to the inner Solar System. The asteroid belt was also strongly perturbed, with these objects supplying a significant fraction of the LHB impactors in accordance with recent geochemical evidence. Our model not only naturally explains the LHB, but also reproduces the observational constraints of the outer Solar System.
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Gravitational interactions between the giant planets and a planetesimal disk on the outer edges of the Solar System produced the influx of impactors observed in the inner Solar System during the Late Heavy Bombardment.
“Subsequent gravitational interactions between the giant planets and a planetesimal disk on the outer edges of the Solar System not only produce the influx of impactors observed in the inner Solar System during the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) period (see Section 3.2) (Gomes et al., 2005)”
From The Astrobiology Primer v2.0 (2016) · cites this paper as Gomes et al., 2005
Two dominant models have emerged under the planetary accretion paradigm to explain the formation of planets and long-term evolution of the Solar System: the Grand Tack model and the Nice model.
“Two dominant models have emerged under the planetary accretion paradigm to explain the formation of planets and long-term evolution of the Solar System: the Grand Tack model, which focuses on planet formation (Walsh et al., 2011), and the Nice model, which focuses on long-term evolution (Gomes et al., 2005; Morbidelli et al., 2005; Tsiganis et al., 2005; Levison et al., 2011).”
From The Astrobiology Primer v2.0 (2016) · cites this paper as Gomes et al., 2005
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“Previous works (Anbar et al., 2001; Gomes et al., 2005) estimated the mass delivered to the Earth during the LHB was ∼2 × 1020 kg.”
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“…a qualitative shift towards an instability-driven scenario (commonly referred to as the Nice model; Tsiganis et al. 2005; Mor-bidelli et al. 2005; Gomes et al. 2005), detailed modeling of the Kuiper belt’s formation has brought the migratory histories of the giants planets into a remarkable…”
BackgroundSelf-citation
- Authors
- Gomes, R., Levison, H. F., Tsiganis, K., & Morbidelli, A.
- Affiliations
- Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (BR)
- Southwest Research Institute (US)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Morbidelli, A.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2005-05
- Volume
- 435
- Issue
- 7041
- Pages
- 466-469
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2017171309
- Cited by
- 1,737
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 34 · 2025: 49 · 2024: 62 · 2023: 70 · 2022: 71 · 2021: 70 · 2020: 82 · 2019: 135 · 2018: 106 · 2017: 75 · 2016: 108 · 2015: 113 · 2014: 110 · 2013: 104 · 2012: 80
- FWCI
- 38.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astro and Planetary Science
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › History and Developments in Astronomy
- Keywords
- Late Heavy Bombardment, giant planet migration, terrestrial planets, solar system dynamics, impactor
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