[meteorite-list] There are no silly questions? Wait until you haveread that :-)

From: David Weir <dgweir_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Oct 19 16:42:10 2004
Message-ID: <41757BF3.F58DDABF_at_earthlink.net>

Bernhard Rems wrote:
>
> Or let me put the question like this: what is the minimum size
> for a body to be able to create a metal core?

Bernhard,

Eric gave an answer of the average size I believe. I only recently read
a paper by Kunihiro, Rubin, McKeegan, and Wasson that addressed this.
They implied that bodies below about 3 km are too small to retain enough
heat from 26Al decay to melt, which of course is necessary to produce
differentiation and subsequent core formation. So now you have your
theoretical minimum size, though maybe the actual size is somewhat
larger.

David
Received on Tue 19 Oct 2004 04:41:23 PM PDT