Dynamics Constraints and Modeling of the Late Heavy Bombardment

Details Dynamics Constraints and Modeling of the Late Heavy Bombardment Dynamics Constraints and Modeling of the Late Heavy Bombardment

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.4602m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #46.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.504

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The existence of a cataclysmic spike in the bombardment rate of the Moon 3.8 Gy ago, roughly 650 My after the formation of the terrestrial planets, was once considered implausible from the dynamical point of view. This led many to favor a 650 My long declining bombardment to explain the Moon's early crater history. Interestingly, this situation has been reversed over the several last years. Dynamical studies now show the bombardment rate was unlikely to remain high over such a long interval. Instead, insights gleaned from our improved understanding of giant planet formation and migration in planetesimal disks suggest that the Jovian planets experienced a late, sudden instability as they crossed some mutual resonance. This triggered a rapid depletion of the trans-Neptunian planetesimal disk and caused an acceleration of the migration of Jupiter and Saturn, which in turn destabilized the majority of the asteroids in the main belt. The so-called `Nice model' built on this idea not only explains the main characteristics of the impact spike in terms of delay, intensity and duration, but also the current orbital architecture of the giant planets,the existence and the orbital distribution of many populations of small bodies (trojans, KBOs, satellites). Moreover, it is consistent with recent work on the size distribution of lunar craters at the time of the LHB, which shows that main belt asteroids, ejected from the main belt by a size-independent process, formed most of the Moon's oldest craters. We briefly review and discuss also alternative scenarios.

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