Explaining the elongated shape of 'Oumuamua by the Eikonal abrasion model
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
2018-02-14 v1
Abstract
The photometry of the minor body with extrasolar origin (1I/2017 U1) 'Oumuamua revealed an unprecedented shape: Meech et al. (2017) reported a shape elongation b/a close to 1/10, which calls for theoretical explanation. Here we show that the abrasion of a primordial asteroid by a huge number of tiny particles ultimately leads to such elongated shape. The model (called the Eikonal equation) predicting this outcome was already suggested in Domokos et al. (2009) to play an important role in the evolution of asteroid shapes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1712.04409,
title = {Explaining the elongated shape of 'Oumuamua by the Eikonal abrasion model},
author = {Gábor Domokos and András A. Sipos and Gyula M. Szabó and Péter L. Várkonyi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.04409},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
Accepted by the Research Notes of the AAS