Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.3801m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #38.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.464
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The Kuiper belt is largely dynamically stable on gigayear timescales, but weak orbital instabilities - also known as chaotic diffusion - have eroded its population by several tens of percent over the past 4 gigayears. Each of the dynamical subclasses in the Kuiper belt has slightly different loss rates. In this paper, I reconstruct the populations of the different subclasses as they were 4 gigayears ago, an epoch when the presently observed dynamical structure is thought to have been established. This exercise shows that the resonant/classical population ratio was significantly higher in the past, as also the scattered/classical population ratio; the resonant Twotino/Plutino population ratio was also much greater in the past. Such a historical projection is necessary for testing and constraining theories for the origin of the dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt. The differential loss rates of the various KB dynamical classes are also of interest for understanding the sources of impactors that are recorded in the impact craters on solid planetary bodies, as well as for establishing the provenance of transient small bodies, such as the Centaurs and the Jupiter family comets.
This research was supported in part by grants from NASA's Origins of Solar Systems and Outer Planets Research programs.
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