The Primordial Excitation and Clearing of the Asteroid Belt---Revisited

Details The Primordial Excitation and Clearing of the Asteroid Belt---Revisited The Primordial Excitation and Clearing of the Asteroid Belt---Revisited

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.1315o&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #13.15; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.507

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

Several lines of evidence suggest that the primordial asteroid belt was hundreds to thousands of times more massive than the current main belt. In addition, the asteroid belt is dynamically excited in eccentricity and inclination and the different asteroid taxonomic types are mixed over a scale of roughly 1 AU, implying significant radial migration. The most promising theory for explaining these properties is that lunar- to Mars-mass planetary embryos initially present in the primordial asteroid belt were excited by Jupiter, and in the process of being ejected from the asteroid belt they depleted most of the mass of asteroids and left the remaining asteroids dynamically excited and scattered in semimajor axis [1,2]. We have performed new, high-resolution numerical simulations of this process for the cases where Jupiter and Saturn are on their current orbits and on their original, nearly circular and co-planar orbits predicted by the Nice Model of outer Solar System evolution [3,4].
We find that depletion is slower in the case where Jupiter and Saturn are on the orbits predicted by the Nice Model than when they are on their current orbits, but the overall level of depletion is comparable in both cases. That level of depletion is about a factor of ten less than is needed to explain the current mass of the main belt, implying that a secondary depletion event, such as that which naturally occurs in the Nice Model, is necessary. In that case, the asteroids that survive the secondary depletion event will resemble the current main belt in terms of radial mixing and dynamical excitation, as well as total mass.
[1] Wetherill (1992), Icarus 100, pp. 307-325.
[2] Petit et al. (2001), Icarus 153, pp. 338-347.
[3] Gomes et al. (2005), Nature 435, pp. 466-469.
[4] Tsiganis et al. (2005), Nature 435, pp. 459-461.

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