Probable Cause of Interplanetary Field Enhancements: Destructive Collisions of Small Bodies

Details Probable Cause of Interplanetary Field Enhancements: Destructive Collisions of Small Bodies Probable Cause of Interplanetary Field Enhancements: Destructive Collisions of Small Bodies

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufm.p41c1640l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #P41C-1640

Physics

[6022] Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies / Impact Phenomena, [6025] Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies / Interactions With Solar Wind Plasma And Fields

Scientific paper

Interplanetary Field Enhancements (IFEs) appear as smoothly varying cusp-shaped enhancements in the interplanetary magnetic field with a strong central current sheet. They last minutes to many hours. IFEs were attributed to dust released by asteroids and comets because of their appearance in association with conjunctions with asteroid 2201 Oljato. To maintain their magnetic field structure while at rest in the solar wind frame, IFEs must have significant mass because they do not have a flux rope geometry. We use the pressure gradient force to estimate the IFE mass using Helios (0.3-1.0AU) and ACE (1AU) data. We find the magnetic pressure difference falls as R-2 approximately from 0.3AU to 1AU, keeping the mass almost constant. At 1AU, the most frequent IFE mass is 10^8 kg and the rate decreases with both increasing and decreasing mass. We believe IFEs arise in interactions between solar wind and charged nanoscale dust particles produced in collisions of interplanetary objects. This hypothesis explains the large velocity achieved by IFEs, the macroscale magnetic field disturbances and the large mass contained in IFEs. In this paper we will use observed meteoroid population and collision models to calculate the inferred occurrence rate at 1AU and estimate the mass released by these collisions. By estimating the size of the disturbance produced by the collisions, we can relate the collision rate to the event rate detected by a spacecraft. The estimated meteoroid collision rate is found to be consistent with the IFE occurrence rate within the same mass range.

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