Physics – Geophysics
Scientific paper
May 2000
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000dda....31.0301c&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA Meeting #31, #03.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.858
Physics
Geophysics
Scientific paper
Several works have modeled lunar accretion from an impact-generated disk utilizing N-body orbital integrations. These simulations have described the initial protolunar disk with N=103 to 104 100-km sized moonlets. Typically after 103 orbits (about a year), one large moon has accreted just outside the Earth's Roche limit with a mass that is a function of the initial disk angular momentum. While past models have been successful in yielding a single moon, they have not provided an adequate treatment of the Roche-interior disk. Such a disk would contain vastly larger numbers of bodies than can be tracked using direct N-body techniques. In addition, the rate of disk spreading observed in the N-body simulations is so fast ( a month) that it implies an energy release rate sufficient to vaporize the disk material. A more physically plausible model involves a disk viscosity (and lifetime) that is regulated by the disk's cooling time, 10-100 years. To address these issues, a ``hybrid'' model for lunar accretion is being developed that treats the Roche interior disk as a fluid with a radiation-limited viscosity, while Roche exterior material is still followed using an N-body approach. If the inner disk persisted after the Moon formed, disk-Moon interactions would affect the Moon's early orbit. Indeed, it has recently been proposed that a single resonant interaction between a lunar-sized moon and an inner disk can increase the moon's orbital inclination to values as high as 15 degrees. This may offer an explanation for the origin of the Moon's puzzling initial inclination (which from the Moon's current orbit is known to have been about 10 degrees), and may remove an often-raised objection to the impact theory for lunar origin. This work has been supported by the NASA Origins of Solar System and Planetary Geology and Geophysics Programs.
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