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Published August 11, 1978 | public
Journal Article

Interstellar Cloud Material: Contribution to Planetary Atmospheres

Abstract

A statistical analysis of the properties of dense interstellar clouds indicates that the solar system has encountered at least a dozen clouds of sufficient density to cause planets to accumulate nonnegligible amounts of some isotopes. The effect is most pronounced for neon. This mechanism could be responsible for much of the neon in Earth's atmosphere. For Mars, the predicted amount of neon added by cloud encounters greatly exceeds the present abundance.

Additional Information

© 1978 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 23 May 1977; revised 18 April 1978. This work was supported in part by NSF grant PHY76-83865 at California Institute of Technology and NSF grant AST 74-20076 A01 at Rice University.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023