Computer Science
Scientific paper
Sep 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..639l&link_type=abstract
European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a
Computer Science
Scientific paper
An important parameter governing the behaviour of the atmosphere of a celestial object is the ratio of its gravitational to thermal energy: (1) where M is the mass of the body, m is the mass of a gas molecule, T is the gas temperature, and G and k are Newton's and Boltzmann's constants, respectively. When this ratio is large (>>1), in a planet, the atmosphere is bound. When the ratio is small (<<1), as in a comet, the atmosphere undergoes an uncontrolled hydrodynamic escape. For a KBO with a radius of 300 km a surface temperature of 30 K, and an atmosphere of CO, this ratio is ~3. This is comparable to the ratio at the base of the present-day solar corona. As a result, for such objects, one may apply Parker's theory of the solar corona [1] to calculate the atmospheric flow. It can be shown [2] that a simple criterion for the applicability of coronal theory is (2) where is the adiabatic index. A more precise criterion is given in [2], and the radii for different gases are shown in Fig. 1. If we apply the theory to such bodies, we can compute, not only the details of the gas flow, but also the motion of aerosols that are dragged along with the gas.
Levi Amit
Podolak Morris
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