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Unformatted text preview: Comet Beginnings and Ends I. The proto-Sun had a magnetic field and spewed out ions. The ions were dragged along by the magnetic field that rotated with the proto-Sun. The dragging of the ions around slowed down the proto-Sun's rotation rate. Also, accretion disks like the solar nebula tend to transfer angular momentum outward as they transfer mass inward. This explains item (l) above. J. Because of its great compression, the core of the proto-Sun core reached about 10 million Kelvin and the hydrogen nuclei started fusing together to produce helium nuclei and a lot of energy. The Sun "turned on." The Sun produced strong winds called T-Tauri winds that swept out the rest of the nebula that was not already incorporated into the planets. This whole process took just a few hundred million years and was finished by about 4.6 billion years ago. After forming the disk, the disk would have cooled as the heat was radiated to space. However, before ices could condense and clump closer to the proto-Sun than the "frost line" , the Sun went...
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This note was uploaded on 12/15/2011 for the course AST AST1002 taught by Professor Emilyhoward during the Fall '10 term at Broward College.
- Fall '10