Retrograde spins of near-Earth asteroids from the Yarkovsky effect

Details Retrograde spins of near-Earth asteroids from the Yarkovsky effect Retrograde spins of near-Earth asteroids from the Yarkovsky effect

Mar 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004natur.428..400l&link_type=abstract

Nature, Volume 428, Issue 6981, pp. 400-401 (2004).

Physics

22

Scientific paper

Dynamical resonances in the asteroid belt are the gateway for the production of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). To generate the observed number of NEAs, however, requires the injection of many asteroids into those resonant regions. Collisional processes have long been claimed as a possible source, but difficulties with that idea have led to the suggestion that orbital drift arising from the Yarkovsky effect dominates the injection process. (The Yarkovsky effect is a force arising from differential heating-the `afternoon' side of an asteroid is warmer than the `morning' side.) The two models predict different rotational properties of NEAs: the usual collisional theories are consistent with a nearly isotropic distribution of rotation vectors, whereas the `Yarkovsky model' predicts an excess of retrograde rotations. Here we report that the spin vectors of NEAs show a strong and statistically significant excess of retrograde rotations, quantitatively consistent with the theoretical expectations of the Yarkovsky model.

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