Physics
Scientific paper
Aug 1965
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1965saosr.182.....w&link_type=abstract
SAO Special Report #182 (1965)
Physics
Scientific paper
This paper considers the effect of radioactive heating on an icy conglomerate cometary nucleus. The heat conductivity in such a body is extremely low, and the surface temperatures required to radiate the heat generated for reasonable cometary dimensions are also very low, less than 10° K. Heat and mass transfer is effected in the early stages primarily by the sublimation in the core of the more volatile materials, such as CH4, which diffuse outward and recondense near the surface of the nucleus. Although this process begins soon after formation, a thick outer crystalline shell is not formed generally until well after the nucleus has been perturbed into the great cometary cloud. After ejection into the cometary cloud. After ejection into the cometery cloud, the outer shell of the more volatile materials develops and thickens, leaving the comet with an external brittle shell and a core depleted of the more volatile constituents. During its long stage in "interstellar" space the comet is affected by practically no external physical forces. On its first close approach to the sun, however, it is for the first time exposed to strong external solar radiation and sublimation. This is a form of heat shock that may cause comets to split.
Stefanik Robert P.
Whipple Fred L.
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