THE FORMATION AND THE INNER STRUCTURE OF THE EARTH BY N-BODY SIMULATION

Abstract

A mechanism of formation of a planet from a gaseous cloud and dust is proposed. The particles of the clouds are combined into clusters and the gravitational contraction of the system is modeled using central gravitational field. Initially the clusters are randomly distributed in the space, and during the contraction process they form hollow spherical layers. The thermodynamic approach considers each cluster as a volume comprising an initial number of the particles to give the temperature of the layers. This method has been used to model the formation of the Earth at early stages. Our results demonstrate that the gravitational contraction leads to quantization of the structure and formation of spherical shells. Particularly, the Earth consists of at least three spherical layers of high density.