Matthew Clement

2020

Matthew S. Clement, Nathan A. Kaib, and John E. Chambers (2020): Embryo Formation with GPU Acceleration: Reevaluating the Initial Conditions for Terrestrial Accretion, Planetary Science Journal, American Astronomical Society, Vol 1, Num 1
Matthew S. Clement, Alessandro Morbidelli, Sean N. Raymond, Nathan A. Kaib (2020): A record of the final phase of giant planet migration fossilized in the asteroid belt's orbital structure, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Royal Astronomical Society, Vol 492, Num 1, ppL56-L60

2019

Matthew Clement (2019): The Early Instability Scenario for Planet Formation in the Solar System, The University of Oklahoma Libraries, Oklahoma State University Libraries, and the University of Central Oklahoma Max Chambers Library, SHAREOK Repository, Vol Oklahoma University dissertations
Matthew S. Clement, Nathan A. Kaib, Sean N. Raymond, John E. Chambers, and Kevin J. Walsh (2019): The Early Instability Scenario: Terrestrial Planet Formation During the Giant Planet Instability, and the Effect of Collisional Fragmentation, Icarus, Elsevier BV, Vol 321, pp778--790
Matthew S. Clement, Nathan A. Kaib, and John E. Chambers (2019): Dynamical Constraints on Mercury's Collisional Origin, Astronomical Journal, The American Astronomical Society, Vol 157, Num 5, pp208
Matthew S. Clement, Sean N. Raymond, and Nathan A. Kaib (2019): Excitation and Depletion of the Asteroid Belt in the Early Instability Scenario, Astronomical Journal, The American Astronomical Society, Vol 157, Num 1, pp38

2018

Matthew S. Clement, Nathan A. Kaib, Sean N. Raymond, and Kevin J. Walsh (2018): Mars' Growth Stunted by an Early Giant Planet Instability, Icarus, Elsevier BV, Vol 311, Num 33, pp340-356

2019

Matthew Clement (2019): The Early Instability Scenario for Planet Formation in the Solar System, 2019 Blue Waters Annual Report, pp344-345

2018

Matthew Clement (2018): How the Solar System Survived a Violent Epoch of Dynamical Instability, 2018 Blue Waters Annual Report, pp276-277

The Giant Planets in the Solar System Stunted the Growth of Mars


May 10, 2018

For centuries, astronomers and scientists have sought to understand how our Solar System came to be. Since that time, two theories have become commonly-accepted that explain how it formed and evolved over time. These are the Nebular Hypothesis and the Nice Model, respectively. Whereas the former contends that the Sun and planets formed from a large cloud of dust and gas, the latter maintains the giant planets have migrated since their formation. This is what has led to the Solar System as we know it today. However, an enduring mystery about these theories is how Mars came to be the way it is. Why, for example, is it significantly smaller than Earth and inhospitable to life as we know it when all indications show that it should be comparable in size? According to a new study by an international team of scientists, the migration of the giant planets could have been what made the difference. As Matt Clement, a graduate student in the HL Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma and the lead author on the paper, explained to Universe Today via email: “In the model, the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) originally formed much closer to the Sun. In order to reach their current orbital locations, the entire solar system undergoes a period of orbital instability. During this unstable period, the size and the shape of the giant planet’s orbits change rapidly.” For the sake of their study, which was recently published in the scientific journal Icarus under the title “Mars Growth Stunted by an Early Giant Planet Instability“, the team expanded on the Nice Model. Through a series of dynamical simulations, they attempted to show how, during the early Solar System, the growth of Mars was halted thanks to the orbital instabilities of the giant planets.


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University of Oklahoma astrophysics team explains Mars’ stunted growth


May 4, 2018

A University of Oklahoma astrophysics team explains why the growth of Mars was stunted by an orbital instability among the outer solar system’s giant planets in a new study on the evolution of the young solar system. The OU study builds on the widely-accepted Nice Model, which invokes a planetary instability to explain many peculiar observed aspects of the outer solar system. An OU model used computer simulations to show how planet accretion (growth) is halted by the outer solar system instability. Without it, Mars possibly could have become a larger, habitable planet like Earth. “This study offers a simple and more elegant solution for why Mars is small, barren and uninhabitable,” said Matthew S. Clement, OU graduate student in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences.


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Why Mars Turned Into A Planetary Runt


Apr 22, 2018

Mars has long tantalized humanity as a potential astrobiological haven, but its fate as a planetary runt and a long-shot for life as we know it may have been sealed from its earliest formation. At least, that’s the implication of a new paper appearing in the journal Icarus. “Mars is believed to be geologically older than Earth, yet [both] formed out of the same material very close to each other,” Matthew Clement, the paper’s lead author and a graduate researcher in planetary science at the University of Oklahoma, told me. “Therefore, when the solar system was very young, Mars grew to its present size in just a few million years and for some reason stopped getting bigger.” All the while Earth and Venus continued to grow bigger for another 100 million years or so, says Clement. The crux of the paper, however, is that the leading model used to explain the instabilities, orbits, and dynamics of the early outer solar system, can also be used to explain the makeup of our current inner solar system. That is, if such instabilities occurred while the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) were still forming. ---- In the paper, Clement and colleagues use 800 dynamical computer simulations to show that an early instability in the outer solar system strongly influences terrestrial planet formation. Their results also consistently produce present-day Mars’ analogs (or rocky planets about half the diameter of Earth). “Large embryos are either ejected or scattered inward toward Earth and Venus (in some cases to deliver water), and Mars is left behind as a stranded embryo ,” the authors write.


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