The ABC of ACM: asteroids, Buffon and comets |
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| Authors: | DI Steel |
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| Institution: | Department of Physics and Mathematical Physics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia |
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| Abstract: | Most of the participants in the ACM 96 conference would have made use of facilities in a building named for Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Compte de Buffon (1707–1788). Buffon made many major contributions to the natural sciences, and may be considered to be one of the founders of planetary science. He proposed a theory for the origin of the planets which involved a massive comet having an oblique impact upon the Sun, the ejected material condensing so as to form a regular system of planets. Amongst his mathematical contributions is what is known as Buffon's Needle, whereby experimental evaluations of π may be made by randomly dropping a needle onto a set of parallel lines of separation greater than the needle length, and accumulating the fraction of times that the needle cuts one of the lines. Near-Earth asteroid (NEA) trails imaged onto a CCD chip provide a two-dimensional analogue of this, and where the pixel size is very large (this having some advantages for NEA searching) an analysis based on Buffon's Needle provides probabilities of the NEA trail lying within one, two or three pixels, such probabilities affecting the chances of detection. It is therefore appropriate that Buffon and his contributions to studies of comets and asteroids be remembered in these conference proceedings. |
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