PLANETESIMAL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does planetesimal mean? 

• PLANETESIMAL (noun)
  The noun PLANETESIMAL has 1 sense:

1. one of many small solid celestial bodies thought to have existed at an early stage in the development of the solar system

  Familiarity information: PLANETESIMAL used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PLANETESIMAL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

One of many small solid celestial bodies thought to have existed at an early stage in the development of the solar system

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("planetesimal" is a kind of...):

celestial body; heavenly body (natural objects visible in the sky)

 Context examples 

Planets and planetesimals, smaller objects that include comets and asteroids, condense out of disks of dust, gas and ice around young stars.

(New Study Shows What Interstellar Visitor ‘Oumuamua Can Teach Us, NASA)

During this period, called late accretion, collisions with moon-sized planetary bodies, known as planetesimals, embedded extensive amounts of metal and rock-forming minerals into the Earth's mantle and crust.

(NASA-funded Simulations Show How Massive Collisions Delivered Metal to Early Earth, NASA)

Clumps of dust and ice aggregated into comets and asteroids, some of which collided together to form moon-sized objects or planetesimals, and some of those eventually merged to become planets.

(Vitamin B3 might have been made in space, delivered to Earth by meteorites, NASA)

These reactions may have occurred on the early-formed planetesimals which were accreted to Earth or possibly during the giant impact which formed the Moon and which is believed to have caused large-scale melting of our planet.

(Fiery Collisions That Gave Birth to Earth Could Have Evaporated 40% of Our World, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Scientists suspect most ejected planetesimals come from systems with giant gas planets.

(New Study Shows What Interstellar Visitor ‘Oumuamua Can Teach Us, NASA)

With the support from a NASA Exobiology grant and NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, or SSERVI, researchers at the Southwest Research Institute, or SwRI, and University of Maryland have created high-resolution impact simulations that show significant portions of a large planetesimal’s core could penetrate all the way down to merge with Earth’s core—or ricochet back into space and escape the planet entirely.

(NASA-funded Simulations Show How Massive Collisions Delivered Metal to Early Earth, NASA)