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1.
Abstract— Asteroids tens to hundreds of meters in diameter constitute the most immediate impact hazard to human populations, yet the rate at which they arrive at Earth's surface is poorly known. Astronomic observations are still incomplete in this size range; impactors are subjected to disruption in Earth's atmosphere, and unlike the Moon, small craters on Earth are rapidly eroded. In this paper, we first model the atmospheric behavior of iron and stony bodies over the mass range 1–1012 kg (size range 6 cm‐1 km) taking into account deceleration, ablation, and fragmentation. Previous models in meteoritics deal with rather small masses (<105–106 kg) with the aim of interpreting registered fireballs in atmosphere, or with substantially larger objects without taking into account asteroid disruption to model cratering processes. A few earlier attempts to model terrestrial crater strewn fields did not take into account possible cascade fragmentation. We have performed large numbers of simulations in a wide mass range, using both the earlier “pancake” models and also the separated fragments model to develop a statistical picture of atmosphere‐bolide interaction for both iron and stony impactors with initial diameters up to ?1 km. Second, using a compilation of data for the flux at the upper atmosphere, we have derived a cumulative size‐frequency distribution (SFD) for upper atmosphere impactors. This curve is a close fit to virtually all of the upper atmosphere data over 16 orders of magnitude. Third, we have applied our model results to scale the upper atmosphere curve to a flux at the Earth's surface, elucidating the impact rate of objects <1 km diameter on Earth. We find that iron meteorites >5 times 104 kg (2.5 m) arrive at the Earth's surface approximately once every 50 years. Iron bodies a few meters in diameter (105–106 kg), which form craters ?100 m in diameter, will strike the Earth's land area every 500 years. Larger bodies will form craters 0.5 km in diameter every 20,000 years, and craters 1 km in diameter will be formed on the Earth's land area every 50,000 years. Tunguska events (low‐level atmospheric disruption of stony bolides >108 kg) may occur every 500 years. Bodies capable of producing hazardous tsunami (?200 m diameter projectiles) should strike the Earth's surface every ?100,000 years. This data also allows us to assess the completeness of the terrestrial crater record for a given area over a given time interval. 相似文献
2.
Of the impact craters on Earth larger than 20 km in diameter, 10-15% (3 out of 28) are doublets, having been formed by the simultaneous impact of two well-separated projectiles. The most likely scenario for their formation is the impact of well-separated binary asteroids. If a population of binary asteroids is capable of striking the Earth, it should also be able to hit the other terrestrial planets as well. Venus is a promising planet to search for doublet craters because its surface is young, erosion is nearly nonexistent, and its crater population is significantly larger than the Earth's. After a detailed investigation of single craters separated by less than 150 km and “multiple” craters having diameters greater than 10 km, we found that the proportion of doublet craters on Venus is at most 2.2%, significantly smaller than Earth's, although several nearly incontrovertible doublets were recognized. We believe this apparent deficit relative to the Earth's doublet population is a consequence of atmospheric screening of small projectiles on Venus rather than a real difference in the population of impacting bodies. We also examined “splotches,” circular radar reflectance features in the Magellan data. Projectiles that are too small to form craters probably formed these features. After a careful study of these patterns, we believe that the proportion of doublet splotches on Venus (14%) is comparable to the proportion of doublet craters found on Earth (10-15%). Thus, given the uncertainties of interpretation and the statistics of small numbers, it appears that the doublet crater population on Venus is consistent with that of the Earth. 相似文献
3.
We use high-resolution three-dimensional numerical models of aerodynamically disrupted asteroids to predict the characteristic properties of small impact craters on Venus. We map the mass and kinetic energy of the impactor passing though a plane near the surface for each simulation, and find that the typical result is that mass and energy sort themselves into one to several strongly peaked regions, which we interpret as more-or-less discrete fragments. The fragments are sufficiently well separated as to imply the formation of irregular or multiple craters that are quite similar to those found on Venus. We estimate the diameters of the resulting craters using a scaling law derived from the experiments of Schultz and Gault (1985, J. Geophys. Res. 90 (B5), 3701-3732) of dispersed impactors into targets. We compare the spacings and sizes of our estimated craters with measured diameters tabulated in a Venus crater database (Herrick and Phillips, 1994a, Icarus 111, 387-416; Herrick et al., 1997, in: Venus II, Univ. of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ, pp. 1015-1046; Herrick, 2003, http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/vc/vchome.html) and find quite satisfactory agreement, despite the uncertainty in our crater diameter estimates. The comparison of the observed crater characteristics with the numerical results is an after-the-fact test of our model, namely the fluid-dynamical treatment of large impacts, which the model appears to pass successfully. 相似文献
4.
We describe a model for crater populations on planets and satellites with dense atmospheres, like those of Venus and Titan. The model takes into account ablation (or mass shedding), pancaking, and fragmentation. Fragmentation is assumed to occur due to the hydrodynamic instabilities promoted by the impactors’ deceleration in the atmosphere. Fragments that survive to hit the ground make craters or groups thereof. Crater sizes are estimated using standard laws in the gravity regime, modified to take into account impactor disruption. We use Monte Carlo methods to pick parameters from appropriate distributions of impactor mass, zenith angle, and velocity. Good fits to the Venus crater populations (including multiple crater fields) can be found with reasonable values of model parameters. An important aspect of the model is that it reproduces the dearth of small craters on Venus: this is due to a cutoff on crater formation we impose, when the expected crater would be smaller than the (dispersed) object that would make it. Hydrodynamic effects alone (ablation, pancaking, fragmentation) due to the passage of impactors through the atmosphere are insufficient to explain the lack of small craters. In our favored model, the observed number of craters (940) is produced by ∼5500 impactors with masses , yielding an age of (1-σ uncertainty) for the venusian surface. This figure does not take into account any uncertainties in crater scaling and impactor population characteristics, which probably increase the uncertainty to a factor of two in age.We apply the model with the same parameter values to Titan to predict crater populations under differing assumptions of impactor populations that reflect present conditions. We assume that the impactors (comets) are made of 50% porous ice. Predicted crater production rates are ≈190 craters . The smallest craters on Titan are predicted to be in diameter, and ≈5 crater fields are expected. If the impactors are composed of solid ice (density ), crater production rates increase by ≈70% and the smallest crater is predicted to be in diameter. We give cratering rates for denser comets and atmospheres 0.1 and 10 times as thick as Titan's current atmosphere. We also explicitly address leading-trailing hemisphere asymmetries that might be seen if Titan's rotation rate were strictly synchronous over astronomical timescales: if that is the case, the ratio of crater production on the leading hemisphere to that on the trailing hemisphere is ≈4:1. 相似文献
5.
Abstract— Meteor Crater is one of the first impact structures systematically studied on Earth. Its location in arid northern Arizona has been ideal for the preservation of the structure and the surviving meteoric material. The recovery of a large amount of meteoritic material in and around the crater has allowed a rough reconstruction of the impact event: an iron object 50 m in diameter impacted the Earth's surface after breaking up in the atmosphere. The details of the disruption, however, are still debated. The final crater morphology (deep, bowl‐shaped crater) rules out the formation of the crater by an open or dispersed swarm of fragments, in which the ratio of swarm radius to initial projectile radius Cd is larger than 3 (the final crater results from the sum of the craters formed by individual fragments). On the other hand, the lack of significant impact melt in the crater has been used to suggest that the impactor was slowed down to 12 km/s by the atmosphere, implying significant fragmentation and fragments' separation up to 4 initial radii. This paper focuses on the problem of entry and motion through the atmosphere for a possible Canyon Diablo impactor as a first but necessary step for constraining the initial conditions of the impact event which created Meteor Crater. After evaluating typical models used to investigate meteoroid disruption, such as the pancake and separated fragment models, we have carried out a series of hydrodynamic simulations using the 3D code SOVA to model the impactor flight through the atmosphere, both as a continuum object and a disrupted swarm. Our results indicate that the most probable pre‐atmospheric mass of the Meteor Crater projectile was in the range of 4.108to 1.2.109kg (equivalent to a sphere 46–66 m in diameter). During the entry process the projectile lost probably 30% to 70% of its mass, mainly because of mechanical ablation and gross fragmentation. Even in the case of a tight swarm of particles (Cd < 3), small fragments can separate from the crater‐forming swarm and land on the plains (tens of km away from the crater) as individual meteorites. Starting from an impactor pre‐atmospheric velocity of ?18 km/s, which represents an average value for Earth‐crossing asteroids, we find that after disruption, the most probable impact velocity at the Earth's surface for a tight swarm is around 15 km/s or higher. A highly dispersed swarm would result in a much stronger deceleration of the fragments but would produce a final crater much shallower than observed at Meteor Crater. 相似文献
6.
Classified as a terrestrial planet, Venus, Mars, and Earth are similar in several aspects such as bulk composition and density. Their atmospheres on the other hand have significant differences. Venus has the densest atmosphere, composed of CO2 mainly, with atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface 92 times that of the Earth, while Mars has the thinnest atmosphere, composed also essentially of CO2, with only several millibars of atmospheric surface pressure. In the past, both Mars and Venus could have possessed Earth-like climate permitting the presence of surface liquid water reservoirs. Impacts by asteroids and comets could have played a significant role in the evolution of the early atmospheres of the Earth, Mars, and Venus, not only by causing atmospheric erosion but also by delivering material and volatiles to the planets. Here we investigate the atmospheric loss and the delivery of volatiles for the three terrestrial planets using a parameterized model that takes into account the impact simulation results and the flux of impactors given in the literature. We show that the dimensions of the planets, the initial atmospheric surface pressures and the volatiles contents of the impactors are of high importance for the impact delivery and erosion, and that they might be responsible for the differences in the atmospheric evolution of Mars, Earth and Venus. 相似文献
7.
Cratering rates on the Galilean satellites 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
We exploit recent theoretical advances toward the origin and orbital evolution of comets and asteroids to obtain revised estimates for cratering rates in the jovian system. We find that most, probably more than 90%, of the craters on the Galilean satellites are caused by the impact of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs). These are comets with short periods, in generally low-inclination orbits, whose dynamics are dominated by Jupiter. Nearly isotropic comets (long period and Halley-type) contribute at the 1-10% level. Trojan asteroids might also be important at the 1-10% level; if they are important, they would be especially important for smaller craters. Main belt asteroids are currently unimportant, as each 20-km crater made on Ganymede implies the disruption of a 200-km diameter parental asteroid, a destruction rate far beyond the resources of today's asteroid belt. Twenty-kilometer diameter craters are made by kilometer-size impactors; such events occur on a Galilean satellite about once in a million years. The paucity of 20-km craters on Europa indicates that its surface is of order 10 Ma. Lightly cratered surfaces on Ganymede are nominally of order 0.5-1.0 Ga. The uncertainty in these estimates is about a factor of five. Callisto is old, probably more than 4 Ga. It is too heavily cratered to be accounted for by the current flux of JFCs. The lack of pronounced apex-antapex asymmetries on Ganymede may be compatible with crater equilibrium, but it is more easily understood as evidence for nonsynchronous rotation of an icy carapace. 相似文献
8.
We use the astrophysical hydrocode ZEUS to compute high-resolution models of the disruption and deceleration of cometary fragments striking Jupiter. We find that simple analytic and semianalytic models work well for kilometer-size impactors. We show that previous numerical models that placed the explosion much deeper in the atmosphere failed to fully resolve important gasdynamical instabilities. These instabilities tear the comet apart, greatly increase its effective cross section, and bring it to an abrupt halt. A 1 km diameter fragment loses over 90% of its kinetic energy within a single scale height at an atmospheric pressure of order 10 bars. For all practical purposes, it explodes. 相似文献
9.
New three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of hypervelocity impacts into the crust of Titan were undertaken to determine the fraction of liquid water generated on the surface of Saturn's largest moon over its history and, hence, the potential for surface—modification of hydrocarbons and nitriles by exposure to liquid water. We model in detail an individual impact event in terms of ejecta produced and melt generated, and use this to estimate melt production over Titan's history, taking into account the total flux of the impactors and its decay over time. Our estimates show that a global melt layer at any time after the very beginning of Titan's history is improbable; but transient melting local to newly formed craters has occurred over large parts of the surface. Local maxima of the melt are connected with the largest impact events. We also calculate the amount of volatiles delivered at the impact with various impact velocities (from 3 km/s for possible Hyperion fragments to 11 km/s for Jupiter family comets) and their retention as a possible source of Titan's atmosphere. We find the probability of impact ejecta escaping Titan with its modern dense and thick atmosphere is rather low, and dispersal of Titan organics throughout the rest of the Solar System requires impactors tens of kilometers in diameter. Water ice melting and exposure of organics to liquid water has been widespread because of impacts, but burial or obscuration of craters by organic deposits or cryovolcanism is aided by viscous relaxation. The largest impactors may breach an ammonia-water mantle layer, creating a circular albedo contrast rather than a crater. 相似文献
10.
Plumes produced by the impacts of asteroids and comets consist of rock vapor and heated air. They emit visible light, ultraviolet, and infrared radiation, which can greatly affect the environment. We have carried out numerical simulations of the impacts of stony and cometary bodies with a diameter of 0.3, 1, and 3 km, which enter the atmosphere at various angles, using a hydrodynamic model supplemented by radiation transfer. We assumed that the cosmic object has no strength, and deforms, fragments, and vaporizes in the atmosphere. After the impact on the ground, the formation of craters and plumes was simulated, taking the internal friction of destroyed rocks and the trail formed in the atmosphere into account. The equation of radiative transfer, added to the equations of gas dynamics, was used in the approximation of radiative heat conduction or, if the Rosseland optical depth of a radiating volume of gas and vapor was less than unity, in the volume‐emission approximation. We used temperature and density distributions obtained in these simulations to calculate radiation fluxes on the Earth's surface by integrating the equation of radiative transfer along rays passing through a luminous region. We used tables of the equation of state of dunite and quartz (for stony impactors and a target) and air, as well as tables of absorption coefficients of air, vapor of ordinary chondrite, and vapor of cometary material. We have calculated the radiation impulse on the ground and the impact radiation efficiency (a ratio of thermal radiation energy incident on the ground to the kinetic energy of a body), which ranges from ~0.5% to ~9%, depending on the impactor size and the angle of entry into the atmosphere. Direct thermal radiation from fireballs and impact plumes, poses a great danger to people, animals, plants, and economic objects. After the impacts of asteroids at a speed of 20 km s?1 at an angle of 45°, a fire can occur at a distance of 250 km if the asteroid has a diameter of 0.3 km, and at a distance of 2000 km if the diameter is 3 km. 相似文献
11.
William K. Hartmann Ingrid J. Daubar Olga Popova Emily C. S. Joseph 《Meteoritics & planetary science》2018,53(4):672-686
Images from Mars Global Surveyor and later images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal that roughly half of the meteoroids striking Mars (at meter to few decameter crater diameters) fragment in the Martian atmosphere, producing small clusters of primary impact craters. Statistics of these “primary clusters” yield valuable information about important Martian phenomena and properties of interplanetary bodies, including meteoroid behavior in the Martian atmosphere, bulk strengths of bodies striking Mars, and the fraction of Martian “field secondary” craters, a datum that would improve crater count chronometry. Many Martian impactors fragment at altitudes significantly higher than 18 km above the mean surface of Mars, and we find that most bodies striking Mars and Earth have low bulk strengths, consistent with crumbly or highly fractured objects. Applying statistics of primary clusters at various elevations and independent diameter bins, we describe a technique to estimate the percentage of semirandomly scattered “field secondary” craters. Our provisional estimate of this percentage, in the diameter range ~250 m down to ~22 m, is ~40% to ~80% of the total impacts, with the higher percentages at smaller diameters. Our data argue against earlier suggestions of overwhelming dominance by either primaries or secondaries in this diameter range. 相似文献
12.
Nathalia Alzate 《Icarus》2011,211(2):1274-1283
Central pit craters are common on Mars, Ganymede and Callisto, and thus are generally believed to require target volatiles in their formation. The purpose of this study is to identify the environmental conditions under which central pit craters form on Ganymede. We have conducted a study of 471 central pit craters with diameters between 5 and 150 km on Ganymede and compared the results to 1604 central pit craters on Mars (diameter range 5-160 km). Both floor and summit pits occur on Mars whereas floor pits dominate on Ganymede. Central peak craters are found in similar locations and diameter ranges as central pit craters on Mars and overlap in location and at diameters <60 km on Ganymede. Central pit craters show no regional variations on either Ganymede or Mars and are not concentrated on specific geologic units. Central pit craters show a range of preservation states, indicating that conditions favoring central pit formation have existed since crater-retaining surfaces have existed on Ganymede and Mars. Central pit craters on Ganymede are generally about three times larger than those on Mars, probably due to gravity scaling although target characteristics and resolution also may play a role. Central pits tend to be larger relative to their parent crater on Ganymede than on Mars, probably because of Ganymede’s purer ice crust. A transition to different characteristics occurs in Ganymede’s icy crust at depths of 4-7 km based on the larger pit-to-crater-diameter relationship for craters in the 70-130-km-diameter range and lack of central peaks in craters larger than 60-km-diameter. We use our results to constrain the proposed formation models for central pits on these two bodies. Our results are most consistent with the melt-drainage model for central pit formation. 相似文献
13.
The Characteristics of Polygonal Impact Craters on Venus 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
Marko Aittola Teemu Öhman Johannes J. Leitner Jouko Raitala 《Earth, Moon, and Planets》2007,101(1-2):41-53
Polygonal impact craters (PICs) are craters whose shape in plan view is more or less angular instead of being circular or ellipsoidal. This type of craters are present and often common on the Moon, Mercury, Mars and several asteroids and icy moons and after the careful analysis we found on Venus 131 impact craters, which show at least two straight rim segments. This survey proves that there are polygonal impact craters on Venus and they may provide a good tool to analyse the properties of the planet’s surface/crust/lithosphere as well as the impact process itself. This study also collaborates our previous results, that PICs are not an anomaly among craters, but an integral part of all impact craters regardless of their size or environment. We compared the polygonal impact craters to “normal”-shaped craters by using different characteristics (diameter, altitude, geologic setting, morphologic class, floor reflectance, degradation stage, and wall terracing). It turned out that the smaller crater sizes favor the formation of straight rim segments, but otherwise these craters show similar characteristics to other craters. Our study also shows that there are regions where the straight segments of the crater rims most clearly follow the orientations of the dominant tectonic features of the area. Thus, the orientations of crater walls reflect–at least in some places–the local tectonics and zones of weakness also on Venus and could thus tell us about the directions and distributions of fractures or other zones of weakness in the crust. 相似文献
14.
Rónadh COX Lissa C. F. ONG Masahiko ARAKAWA Kate C. SCHEIDER 《Meteoritics & planetary science》2008,43(12):2027-2048
Abstract— Ice thickness estimates and impactor dynamics indicate that some impacts must breach Europa's ice crust; and outcomes of impact experiments using ice‐over‐water targets range from simple craters to chaos‐like destroyed zones, depending on impact energy and ice competence. First‐order impacts‐into thick ice or at low impact energy‐produce craters. Second‐order impacts punch through the ice, making holes that resemble raft‐free chaos areas. Third‐order impacts‐into thinnest ice or at highest energy‐produce large irregular raft‐filled zones similar to platy chaos. Other evidence for an impact origin for chaos areas comes from the size‐frequency distribution of chaos+craters on Europa, which matches the impact production functions of Ganymede and Callisto; and from small craters around the large chaos area Thera Macula, which decrease in average size and density per unit area as a function of distance from Thera's center. There are no tiny chaos areas and no craters >50 km diameter. This suggests that small impactors never penetrate, whereas large ones (ÜberPenetrators: >2.5 km diameter at average impact velocity) always do. Existence of both craters and chaos areas in the size range 2–40 km diameter points to spatial/temporal variation in crust thickness. But in this size range, craters are progressively outnumbered by chaos areas at larger diameters, suggesting that probability of penetration increases with increasing scale of impact. If chaos areas do represent impact sites, then Europa's surface is older than previously thought. The recalculated resurfacing age is 480 (‐302/+960) Ma: greater than prior estimates, but still very young by solar system standards. 相似文献
15.
Ralph Kahn 《Icarus》1982,49(1):71-85
We show how crater size-density counts may be used to help constrain the history of the Venus atmosphere, based on the predictions of simple but reasonable models for crater production, surface erosion, and the effects of atmospheric drag and breakup on incident meteors in the Venus atmosphere. If the atmosphere is old, we may also be able to determine the importance of breakup as a mechanism for destroying incident meteors in a dense fluid. In particular, if the atmosphere is young, the old (uneroded) surfaces will have crater densities upward of 10?4 km?2 and a ratio of small (4 km) craters to large (128 km) craters near 103. If the atmosphere is old and the breakup mechanism is dominant, absolute crater densities on Venus surfaces will be diminished by several orders of magnitude relative to the young atmosphere case. If atmospheric drag is dominant and the atmosphere is old, the absolute crater density will be lowered by perhaps an order of magnitude relative to the young atmosphere case, and the ratio of small to large craters will be reduced to a value near 101.5 according to the models. The comparison of crater populations on young, as well as old, surfaces on Venus can help in distinguishing the young and old atmosphere scenarios, especially since the situation may be complicated by currently undetermined erosional and tectonic processes. Once a large fraction of Venus surface has been imaged at kilometer resolution, as the VOIR project promises to do, it could be possible to make an early determination of the age of the Venus atmosphere. 相似文献
16.
The observed record of impact craters on the surface of the planet Venus can be used to calculate the contribution of fine materials generated by impact processes to the global sedimentary cycle. Using various methods for the extending the population of impact craters with diameters larger than 8 km observed on the northern 25% of the Venus to the entire surface area of the planet, we have estimated how materials ejected from the integrated record of impact cratering over the past 0.5 to 1.0 æ might have been globally distributed. Relationships for computing the fraction of ejected materials from impact craters in a given size range originally developed for the Moon (and for terrestrial nuclear explosion cratering experiments) were scaled for Venus conditions, and the ejecta fragments with sizes less than 30 m were considered to represent those with the greatest potential for global transport and eventual fallout. A similar set of calculations were carried out using the observed terrestrial cratering record, corrected for the missing population of small craters and oceanic impacts that have either been eroded or are unobserved (due to water cover). Our calculations suggest that both Venus and the Earth should have experienced approximately 6000 impact events over the past 0.5 to 1 æ (in the size range from 1 km to about 180 km). The cumulative global thickness of impact-derived fine materials that could have produced from this record of impacts in this time period is most likely between 1–2 mm for Venus, and certainly no more than 6 mm (assuming an enhanced population of large 150–200 km scale impact events). For Earth, the global cumulative thickness is most likely 0.2 to 0.3 mm, and certainly no more than 2 to 3 mm. The cumulative volume of impact ejecta (independent of particle size) for Venus generated over the past 1 æ, when spread out over the global surface area to form a uniform layer, would fall between 2 and 12 meters, although 99% of this material would be deposited in the near rim ejecta blanket (from 1 to 2.3 crater radii from the rim crest), and only 0.02% would be available for global transport as dust-sized particles. Thus, our conclusion is that Venus, as with the Earth, cannot have formed a substantial impact-derived regolith layer over the past billion years of its history as is typical for smaller silicate planets such as the Moon and Mercury. This conclusion suggests that there must be other extant mechanisms for sediment formation and redistribution in the Venus environment, on the basis of Venera Lander surface panoramas which demonstrate the occurrence of local sediment accumulations.'Geology and Tectonics of Venus', special issue edited by Alexander T. Basilevsky (USSR Acad. of Sci. Moscow), James W. Head (Brown University, Providence), Gordon H. Pettengill (MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and R. S. Saunders (J.P.L., Pasadena). 相似文献
17.
The outcomes of asteroid collisional evolution are presently unclear: are most asteroids larger than 1 km size gravitational aggregates reaccreted from fragments of a parent body that was collisionally disrupted, while much smaller asteroids are collisional shards that were never completely disrupted? The 16 km mean diameter S-type asteroid 433 Eros, visited by the NEAR mission, has surface geology consistent with being a fractured shard. A ubiquitous fabric of linear structural features is found on the surface of Eros and probably indicates a globally consolidated structure beneath its regolith cover. Despite the differences in absolute scale and in lighting conditions for NEAR and Hayabusa, similar features should have been found on 25143 Itokawa if present. This much smaller, 320 m diameter S-asteroid was visited by the Hayabusa spacecraft. Comparative analyses of Itokawa and Eros geology reveal fundamental differences, and interpretation of Eros geology is illuminated by comparison with Itokawa. Itokawa lacks a global lineament fabric, and its blocks, craters, and regolith may be inconsistent with formation and evolution as a fractured shard, unlike Eros. An object as small as Itokawa can form as a rubble pile, while much larger Eros formed as a fractured shard. Itokawa is not a scaled-down Eros, but formed by catastrophic disruption and reaccumulation. 相似文献
18.
Cratering rates in the outer Solar System 总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2
This paper is a compilation by table, graph, and equation of impact cratering rates from Jupiter to Pluto. We use several independent constraints on the number of ecliptic comets. Together they imply that the impact rate on Jupiter by 1.5-km-diameter comets is currently ?(d > 1.5 km) = 0.005−0.003+0.006 per annum. Other kinds of impactors are currently unimportant on most worlds at most sizes. The size-number distribution of impactors smaller than 20 km is inferred from size-number distributions of impact craters on Europa, Ganymede, and Triton; while the size-number distribution of impacting bodies larger than 50 km is equated to the size-number distribution of Kuiper Belt objects. The gap is bridged by interpolation. It is notable that small craters on Jupiter’s moons indicate a pronounced paucity of small impactors, while small craters on Triton imply a collisional population rich in small bodies. However it is unclear whether the craters on Triton are of heliocentric or planetocentric origin. We therefore consider two cases for Saturn and beyond: a Case A in which the size-number distribution is like that inferred at Jupiter, and a Case B in which small objects obey a more nearly collisional distribution. Known craters on saturnian and uranian satellites are consistent with either case, although surface ages are much younger in Case B, especially at Saturn and Uranus. At Neptune and especially at Saturn our cratering rates are much higher than rates estimated by Shoemaker and colleagues, presumably because Shoemaker’s estimates mostly predate discovery of the Kuiper Belt. We also estimate collisional disruption rates of moons and compare these to estimates in the literature. 相似文献
19.
Multiple impact basins formed on the Moon about 3.8 Gyr ago in what is known as the lunar cataclysm or Late Heavy Bombardment. Many workers currently interpret the lunar cataclysm as an impact spike primarily caused by main-belt asteroids destabilized by delayed planetary migration. We show that morphologically fresh (class 1) craters on the lunar highlands were mostly formed during the brief tail of the cataclysm, as they have absolute crater number density similar to that of the Orientale basin and ejecta blanket. The connection between class 1 craters and the cataclysm is supported by the similarity of their size-frequency distribution to that of stratigraphically-identified Imbrian craters. Majority of lunar craters younger than the Imbrium basin (including class 1 craters) thus record the size-frequency distribution of the lunar cataclysm impactors. This distribution is much steeper than that of main-belt asteroids. We argue that the projectiles bombarding the Moon at the time of the cataclysm could not have been main-belt asteroids ejected by purely gravitational means. 相似文献
20.
Richard P. Binzel 《Icarus》1984,57(2):294-306
The addition of the unbiased sample of R. P. Binzel and J. D. Mulholland (Icarus56, 519–533) nearly triples the sample size of photoelectrically determined rotational parameters for main belt asteroids with estimated diameters (D) ≤30 km. Nonparametric stattistical tests which require no assumptions about the distributions or variances of the samples are used to examine rotational parameters for all D ≤ 30 km asteroids. A comparison of photoelectric and photographic results shows that the techniques have a highly significant difference in the range of detected frequencies. This difference does not allow photographic and photoelectric observations to be combined for meaningful statistical tests since a photographic bias toward smaller sample variances can induce statistical results that appear overly significant. Photographic observations also show a highly significant bias toward detecting asteroids with larger lightcurve amplitudes. The fit of a Maxwellian to the observed rotational frequency distribution can be rejected at a highly significant confidence level but the observed distribution can be acceptably fit by two Maxwellian distributions, which is consistent with the hypothesis that there are separate populations of slow and fast rotating asteroids. The frequency distributions of <15 km main belt asteroids and Earth and Mars crossers are not found to differ significantly. However, the larger mean lightcurve amplitude of the Earth and Mars crossing asteroids is found to be statistically significant. This latter result is interesting in view of the lack of any strong inverse amplitude versus diameter relation for small asteroids. No significant diameter dependence on rotational frequency is seen among only D ≤ 30 km asteroids. However, the inverse frequency versus diameter relation for D ≤ 120 km asteroids found by S. F. Dermott, A. W. Harris, and C. D. Murray (Icarus, in press) is found to be statistically significant using a linear least-squares analysis of photoelectric data only. No significant diameter dependence on rotational lightcurve amplitude is seen using linear least-squares analysis of photoelectric data for D≤30 and D≤90 km asteroids. However, a significant inverse amplitude versus diameter relation is found when this analysis is extended to D≤120 km asteroids. This finding may be consistent with the hypothesis of Dermott et al. that near 120 km there is a transition between primordial asteroids and their collisional fragments. 相似文献