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Project Progress

In collaboration with Jonathan Lunine, Quinn and Raymond have performed integrations of planetary embryos as they form the terrestrial planets. They have explored the dependence of the chemical composition of the resulting terrestrial planets on the properties of the planet formation scenario. Properties they have examined include the mass, orbital parameters and formation time of Jupiter, and the position of the snow line with respect to the habitable zone. They find that moving Jupiter in or out with respect to the snowline tends to decrease the amount of volatiles delivered to planets in the habitable zone. They also find that the amount of volatiles that a planet receives is a very stochastic process, varying greatly from one simulation to the next. These results are being written up in a paper that is in preparation.

Quinn and Raymond have also explored techniques for connecting the current population of Near Earth Asteroids with the Main belt population.