Chondrule Fine-Grained Mantle Formation by Hypervelocity Impact of Chondrules with a Dusty Gas

Abstract

At some stage during the chondrule (and refractory inclusion) formation process, many of these objects accreted fine-grained mantles of dust. Observations suggest that the mantle thickness is directly proportional to the chondrule-core radius. Following the proposal of H. C. Connolly, Jr., and S. G. Love (1998, Science280, 62-67), we demonstrate numerically how this effect can be produced by the hypersonic interaction between a chondrule and a mixture of gas and dust. This result is of relevance to the shock and jet models of chondrule formation, and places limits on both models. In particular, we use this result to constrain our version of the jet theory of chondrule formation, where chondr..