Other
Scientific paper
Sep 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.5404l&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #54.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.583
Other
Scientific paper
To further our understanding of the initial conditions that produced our solar system we have begun to model the chemical and physical evolution of Oort Cloud comets and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs): the oldest, most volatile-rich, and pristine objects in our solar system. Comets and KBOs provide fundamental information about the initial conditions for the formation of planets. Neither comets nor KBOs have been perfectly preserved. Their surfaces have been weathered by high-energy particles, photons, and micrometeorites. Furthermore, impacts are likely to have significantly altered the bulk chemical and physical properties from their initial state. We have begun conducting direct numerical simulations of collisions between cometesimals to investigate the evolution of the bulk properties of these objects. Our long-term goal is to determine the composition of the early protoplanetary nebula by modeling the evolution of cometesimals into present-day comets.
The simulations are conducted using a shock physics code, CTH, which is coupled to an N-body gravity code, pkdgrav. This method allows detailed modeling of the impact including heating, phase changes, and mixing of material as well as gravitational reaccumulation. In previous work we confirmed that our method produces results consistent with other earlier numerical experiments. In this presentation we present results from 3-D collision experiments between basalt and ice bodies. In these simulations we follow the location and degree to which the reaccumulated material is shocked by the initial impact event. We will also determine the percentage of volatile loss do to the impact.
This study will determine the compositional distribution on the surface and interiors of the collision remnants, which may help explain the diversity of Kuiper Belt Objects when surface weathering is taken into account. Future work will investigate the effect of various mixed internal porosity on collision outcome to determine the level of devolatilization from collisional evolution.
Leinhardt Zoe
Stewart Sarah T.
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