Physics
Scientific paper
Mar 1996
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996lpi....27..801m&link_type=abstract
Lunar and Planetary Science, volume 27, page 801
Physics
Comets, Kuiper Belt, Neptune, Pluto
Scientific paper
Recent observational confirmation of the existence of small bodies near and beyond the orbit of Neptune is a very exciting development in solar system dynamics. The population of this Kuiper Belt for the region between 30 AU and 50 AU heliocentric distance is presently estimated at approximately 35,000 objects larger than 100 km and upwards of 10**9 cometary size objects (less than about 10 km in size). It appears likely that the orbital distribution of these objects was largely determined by dynamical processes in the early history of the solar system that preferentially swept most Kuiper Belt objects into the narrow stable libration zones at Neptune's mean motion resonances, particularly into the 3:2 and the 2:1 resonances located at semimajor axes of 39.5 AU and 47.8 AU, respectively. Here I show that a small but notable fraction of objects in initially near-circular, low-inclination orbits in the vicinity of Neptune would have been captured at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points and survived in that dynamical state the entire orbital evolution of Neptune during the early history of the Solar system.
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