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Evolution of Comets into Asteroids?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

B.G. Marsden
B.G. Marsden*
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Extract

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There has long been speculation as to whether comets evolve into asteroidal objects. On the one hand, in the original version of the Oort (1950) hypothesis, the cometary cloud was supposed to have formed initially from the same material that produced the minor planets; and an obvious corollary was that the main physical difference between comets and minor planets would be that the latter had long since lost their icy surfaces on account of persistent exposure to strong solar radiation (Öpik, 1963). However, following a suggestion by Kuiper (1951), it is now quite widely believed that, whereas the terrestrial planets and minor planets condensed in the inner regions of the primordial solar nebula, icy objects such as comets would have formed more naturally in the outer parts, perhaps even beyond the orbit of Neptune (Cameron, 1962; Whipple, 1964a). Furthermore, recent studies of the evolution of the short-period comets indicate that it is not possible to produce the observed orbital distribution from the Oort cloud, even when multiple encounters with Jupiter are considered (Havnes, 1970). We must now seriously entertain the possibility that most of the short-period orbits evolved directly from low-inclination, low-eccentricity orbits with perihelia initially in the region between, say, the orbits of Saturn and Neptune, and that these comets have never been in the traditional cloud at great distances from the Sun.

Information

Type
Part II-Origin of Asteroids Interrelations with Comets, Meteorites, and Meteors
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 12: Physical Studies of Minor Planets , 1971, pp. 413 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © NASA 1971

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