Express delivery of fossil meteorites from the inner asteroid belt to Sweden     

David Nesvorný  David Vokrouhlický  Brett Gladman 《Icarus》2007,188(2):400-413

Our understanding of planet formation depends in fundamental ways on what we learn by analyzing the composition, mineralogy, and petrology of meteorites. Yet, it is difficult to deduce the compositional and thermal gradients that existed in the solar nebula from the meteoritic record because, in most cases, we do not know where meteorites with different chemical and isotopic signatures originated. Here we developed a model that tracks the orbits of meteoroid-sized objects as they evolve from the ν₆ secular resonance to Earth-crossing orbits. We apply this model to determining the number of meteorites accreted on the Earth immediately after a collisional disruption of a D∼200-km-diameter inner-main-belt asteroid in the Flora family region. We show that this event could produce fossil chondrite meteorites found in an ≈470 Myr old marine limestone quarry in southern Sweden, the L-chondrite meteorites with shock ages ≈470 Myr falling on the Earth today, as well as asteroid-sized fragments in the Flora family. To explain the measured short cosmic-ray exposure ages of fossil meteorites our model requires that the meteoroid-sized fragments were launched at speeds >500 m s⁻¹ and/or the collisional lifetimes of these objects were much shorter immediately after the breakup event than they are today.  相似文献   

Influence of aerosol multiple scattering of ultraviolet radiation on martian atmospheric sensing     

M.-P. Zorzano  C. Córdoba-Jabonero 《Icarus》2007,190(2):492-503

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Generalized YORP evolution: Onset of tumbling and new asymptotic states     

D. Vokrouhlický  S. Breiter  W.F. Bottke 《Icarus》2007,191(2):636-650

Asteroids have a wide range of rotation states. While the majority spin a few times to several times each day in principal axis rotation, a small number spin so slowly that they have somehow managed to enter into a tumbling rotation state. Here we investigate whether the Yarkovsky-Radzievskii-O'Keefe-Paddack (YORP) thermal radiation effect could have produced these unusual spin states. To do this, we developed a Lie-Poisson integrator of the orbital and rotational motion of a model asteroid. Solar torques, YORP, and internal energy dissipation were included in our model. Using this code, we found that YORP can no longer drive the spin rates of bodies toward values infinitely close to zero. Instead, bodies losing too much rotation angular momentum fall into chaotic tumbling rotation states where the spin axis wanders randomly for some interval of time. Eventually, our model asteroids reach rotation states that approach regular motion of the spin axis in the body frame. An analytical model designed to describe this behavior does a good job of predicting how and when the onset of tumbling motion should take place. The question of whether a given asteroid will fall into a tumbling rotation state depends on the efficiency of its internal energy dissipation and on the precise way YORP modifies the spin rates of small bodies.  相似文献   

XMM-Newton observations of the isolated neutron star 1RXS J214303.7+065419/RBS1774     

Mark Cropper  Silvia Zane  Roberto Turolla  Luca Zampieri  Matteo Chieregato  Jeremy Drake  Aldo Treves 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2007,308(1-4):161-166

We report XMM-Newton observations of the isolated neutron star RBS1774 and confirm its membership as an XDINS. The X-ray spectrum is best fit with an absorbed blackbody with temperature kT=101 eV and absorption edge at 0.7 keV. No power law component is required. An absorption feature in the RGS data at 0.4 keV is not evident in the EPIC data, but it is not possible to resolve this inconsistency. The star is not seen in the UV OM data to m _AB ∼21. There is a sinusoidal variation in the X-ray flux at a period of 9.437 s with an amplitude of 4%. The age as determined from cooling and magnetic field decay arguments is 10⁵–10⁶ yr for a neutron star mass of 1.35–1.5 M_⊙.   相似文献   

Unveiling soft gamma-ray repeaters with INTEGRAL     

Diego Götz  Sandro Mereghetti  Kevin Hurley 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2007,308(1-4):51-59

Thanks to INTEGRAL’s long exposures of the Galactic Plane, the two brightest Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters, SGR 1806-20 and SGR 1900+14, have been monitored and studied in detail for the first time at hard-X/soft gamma rays. This has produced a wealth of new scientific results, which we will review here. Since SGR 1806-20 was particularly active during the last two years, more than 300 short bursts have been observed with INTEGRAL and their characteristics have been studied with unprecedented sensitivity in the 15–200 keV range. A hardness-intensity anticorrelation within the bursts has been discovered and the overall Number-Intensity distribution of the bursts has been determined. In addition, a particularly active state, during which 100 bursts were emitted in 10 minutes, has been observed on October 5 2004, indicating that the source activity was rapidly increasing. This eventually led to the Giant Flare of December 27th 2004, for which a possible soft gamma-ray (>80 keV) early afterglow has been detected. The deep observations allowed us to discover the persistent emission in hard X-rays (20–150 keV) from 1806-20 and 1900+14, the latter being in a quiescent state, and to directly compare the spectral characteristics of all Magnetars (two SGRs and three Anomalous X-ray Pulsars) detected with INTEGRAL. D.G. acknowledges the French Space Agency (CNES) for financial support. Based on observations with INTEGRAL, an ESA project with instruments and the science data centre funded by ESA member states (especially the PI countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain), Czech Republic and Poland, and with the participation of Russia and the USA. ISGRI has been realized and maintained in flight by CEA-Saclay/DAPNIA with the support of CNES. K.H. is grateful for support under NASA’s INTEGRAL U.S. Guest Investigator program, Grants NAG5-13738 and NNG05GG35G.  相似文献   

Particle distributions and X-ray spectra in single or multiple solar current sheets     

C. Gontikakis  A. Anastasiadis  C. Efthymiopoulos 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(3):1019-1030

The acceleration of charged particles in a site of magnetic reconnection is analysed by detailed numerical simulations. Single or multiple encounters of the particles with Harris-type reconnecting current sheets (RCSs) are modelled as an overall stochastic process taking place within an active region. RCS physical parameters are selected in a parameter space relevant to solar flares. Initially, the charged particles form a thermal (Maxwellian) distribution corresponding to coronal temperature  ≃2 × 10⁶ K  . Our main goal is to investigate how the acceleration process changes the shape of the particles' kinetic energy distribution. The evolution of the kinetic energy distribution, calculated numerically after one encounter of the particles with a single RCS, is found to be in good agreement with our previously published analytical formulae. In the case of consecutive encounters, we find that the kinetic distribution tends to converge to a practically invariant form after a relatively small number of encounters. We construct a discrete stochastic process that reproduces the numerical distributions and we provide a theoretical interpretation of the asymptotic convergence of the energy distribution. We finally compute the theoretical X-ray spectra that would be emitted by the simulated particles in a thick target model of radiation.  相似文献   

Iron line profiles and self-shadowing from relativistic thick accretion discs     

Sheng-Miao Wu  Ting-Gui Wang 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(3):841-851

We present Fe Kα line profiles from and images of relativistic discs with finite thickness around a rotating black hole using a novel code. The line is thought to be produced by iron fluorescence of a relatively cold X-ray-illuminated material in the innermost parts of the accretion disc and provides an excellent diagnostic of accretion flows in the vicinity of black holes. Previous studies have concentrated on the case of a thin, Keplerian accretion disc. This disc must become thicker and sub-Keplerian with increasing accretion rates. These can affect the line profiles and in turn can influence the estimation of the accretion disc and black hole parameters from the observed line profiles. We here embark on, for the first time, a fully relativistic computation which offers key insights into the effects of geometrical thickness and the sub-Keplerian orbital velocity on the line profiles. We include all relativistic effects such as frame-dragging, Doppler boost, time dilation, gravitational redshift and light bending. We find that the separation and the relative height between the blue and red peaks of the line profile diminish as the thickness of the disc increases. This code is also well suited to produce accretion disc images. We calculate the redshift and flux images of the accretion disc and find that the observed image of the disc strongly depends on the inclination angle. The self-shadowing effect appears remarkable for a high inclination angle, and leads to the black hole shadow being in this case, completely hidden by the disc itself.  相似文献   

Critical properties of spherically symmetric black hole accretion in Schwarzschild geometry     

Ipsita Mandal  Arnab K. Ray  Tapas K. Das 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(4):1400-1406

The stationary, spherically symmetric, polytropic and inviscid accretion flow in the Schwarzschild metric has been set-up as an autonomous first-order dynamical system, and it has been studied completely analytically. Of the three possible critical points in the flow, the one that is physically realistic behaves like the saddle point of the standard Bondi accretion problem. One of the two remaining critical points exhibits the strange mathematical behaviour of being either a saddle point or a centre-type point, depending on the values of the flow parameters. The third critical point is always unphysical and behaves like a centre-type point. The treatment has been extended to pseudo-Schwarzschild flows for comparison with the general relativistic analysis.  相似文献   

Intracluster light and the extended stellar envelopes of cD galaxies: an analytical description     

Marc S. Seigar †  Alister W. Graham  Helmut Jerjen 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(4):1575-1588

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Planetary migration to large radii     

R. G. Martin  S. H. Lubow  J. E. Pringle  M. C. Wyatt 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,378(4):1589-1600

There is evidence for the existence of massive planets at orbital radii of several hundred au from their parent stars where the time-scale for planet formation by core accretion is longer than the disc lifetime. These planets could have formed close to their star and then migrated outwards. We consider how the transfer of angular momentum by viscous disc interactions from a massive inner planet could cause significant outward migration of a smaller outer planet. We find that it is in principle possible for planets to migrate to large radii. We note, however, a number of effects which may render the process somewhat problematic.  相似文献