An N-Body Simulation of the Origin of the Oort Cloud Comets

Details An N-Body Simulation of the Origin of the Oort Cloud Comets An N-Body Simulation of the Origin of the Oort Cloud Comets

Oct 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997aps..ofs...g02c&link_type=abstract

American Physical Society, Ohio Section Fall Meeting, October 10-11, 1997, abstract #G.02

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We have simulated the ejection of planetesimals from the planetary region of the solar system by close encounters with the gas giant planets. Many of these planetesimals are ejected into orbits which have large semimajor axes that have aphelia in the region of the Oort Cloud. A two--dimensional gravitational N-body code has been modified so that the planetesimal orbits are perturbed only by the four gas giant planets; i.e. the planetesimals don't exert gravitational forces on each other. We present the results of two one million year simulations of the orbital evolution of identical planetesimals. The first simulation concentrates the planetesimals in initially circular orbits in the region of the terrestrial planets, and the second concentrates them near the gas giant planets. We find that after one million years of simulation time that many more planetesimals that started in the gas giant region are ejected into long semimajor axis orbits that will take them to the Oort Cloud than those planetesimals that were initially in the terrestrial region. This result is consistent with the fact that cometary bodies originating in the Oort cloud contain large concentrations of ices and could not have originated in the terrestrial region of the solar system.

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