Formation of the Asteroids

Details Formation of the Asteroids Formation of the Asteroids

Sep 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996dps....28.1112w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #28, #11.12; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 28, p.1109

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Understanding the way in which asteroids formed is essential to making use of the information stored in asteroidal meteorites. The formation of asteroids from small planetesimals is considered using two approaches: (1)"Gas Dynamic" modelling of planetesimal accumulation (Wetherill and Stewart, Icarus 1993). (2)Monte Carlo modelling of accumulation of ~ 10000 smaller planetesimals. It is found that the outcome of asteroidal planetesimal formation during the 10(7) years prior to onset of strong Jupiter and Saturn perturbations is very sensitive to initial solid surface density in the asteroidal region. With surface densities varying smoothly from the terrestrial planet zone to Jupiter's distance, rapid runaway growth of Mars-size bodies at 2.5 AU can occur in 10(6) years,if the solid material is concentrated in the central plane of the disk rapidly enough. In this case, the subsequent evolution of the < Ceres-size asteroids is dominated by gravitational and collisional coupling to the evolution of these "lost" giant asteroids and the planets. In contrast, surface densities smaller by a factor of ~ 100 are only marginally sufficient to produce the presently observed asteroids. For this case an additional mechanism must be provided to explain the present ~ 5 km/sec asteroidal relative velocities.

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