Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.1703r&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #17.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.978
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
When meteoroids collide in space they usually do so at many tens of km relative velocity. This event should produce much possibly very fine dust. Few such events and only the most spectacular ones are ever recorded telescopically. However, the STEREO spacecraft, and many spacecraft before them, see two manifestations of these collisions. First their electric antennas observe innumerable small pulses interpreted to be small plasma pulses due to an almost ubiquitous flux of nanometer size dust particles moving at the speed of the solar wind. This speed is possible because the smallest dust particles are both electrically charged, and sufficiently small to be accelerated relatively rapidly by the electromagnetic forces in the solar wind. Second, these same spacecraft observe pressure enhancements in the solar wind plasma and interplanetary magnetic field that extend over 100s of thousands of km, that are capable of transferring solar wind momentum to clouds of such particles. One persistent source of such pressure enhancements is where the asteroid 2201 Oljato crosses Venus’ orbit plane, reinforcing our interpretation of these events as due to collisions. Importantly and consistently, when multispacecraft measurements are available, these disturbances are clocked at the solar wind speed. We believe these macroscale disturbances consist of vast numbers of nanoscale charged dust produced at one time and one location by a collision. The rate of detection of such disturbances is consistent with the expected collision rate of meter-sized objects.
Delzanno Gian Luca
Lai H. R.
Luhmann Janet G.
Opitz Andrea
Russell Christopher T.
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