Dynamics of Main Belt Comets and its Implications to Their Origins, Activation, and Possible Contribution to Earth's Water

Details Dynamics of Main Belt Comets and its Implications to Their Origins, Activation, and Possible Contribution to Earth's Water Dynamics of Main Belt Comets and its Implications to Their Origins, Activation, and Possible Contribution to Earth's Water

May 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dda....39.1405h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #39, #14.05

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Recent observations of icy objects in the asteroid belt have identified a new class of bodies known as Main Belt Comets (MBC). These objects that are dynamically similar to the main belt asteroids (e.g., Tisserand numbers larger than 3), present physical characteristics (e.g., dusty tails) that resemble those of comets. The discovery of Main Belt Comets has raised many questions regarding their origin, regions of existence, activation mechanism, and their possible contribution to the water on Earth. I will present the results of an extensive and systematic study of the dynamical evolution of Main Belt Comets and the mapping of their parameter-space. I will discuss the results within the context of the Nice model and in-situ formation, as possible scenarios for the origin of MBCs, and will put constraints on the models of the formation of these objects. I will also present the results of an extensive numerical study of the collision of MBCs. Observations suggest collisions between km-sized bodies and m-sized objects as a possible triggering mechanism. I will show the results of the collisions of m-sized bodies with MBCs and explain their collision probability. I will also discuss the scattering of MBCs to the inner solar system and their contribution to the formation of Earth and its water budget.
This work is supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute under the cooperative agreement NNA04CC08A at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii.

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