Related papers: Impact cratering and the Oort cloud
The habitability of planets is strongly affected by impacts from comets and asteroids. Indications from the ages of Moon rocks suggest that the inner Solar System experienced an increased rate of impacts roughly 3.8 Gya known as the Late…
The Oort Cloud Comets (OCCs), exemplified by the Great Comet of 1997 (Hale-Bopp), are occasional visitors from the heatless periphery of the solar system. Previous works hypothesized that a great majority of OCCs must physically disrupt…
A numerical simulation of the Oort cloud is used to explain the observed orbital distributions and numbers of Jupiter-family and Halley-type short-period comets. Comets are given initial orbits with perihelion distances between 5 and 36 AU,…
The impact cratering record of the Moon and the terrestrial planets provides important clues about the formation and evolution of the Solar System. Especially intriguing is the epoch 3.8-3.9 Gyr ago (Ga), known as the Late Heavy Bombardment…
The Moon has suffered intense impact bombardment ending at 3.9 Gyr ago, and this bombardment probably affected all of the inner Solar System. Basin magnetization signatures and lunar crater size-distributions indicate that the last episode…
Context: Distant trans-Neptunian objects are subject to planetary perturbations and galactic tides. The former decrease with the distance, while the latter increase. In the intermediate regime where they have the same order of magnitude…
It is unknown if an Oort cloud reaches its maximum mass within its star's birth cluster or millions of years later. Complicating the Oort cloud evolution process is the fact that comets can be stripped from orbit due to perturbations from…
We study the influence of an open cluster environment on the formation and current structure of the Oort cloud. To do this, we have run 19 different simulations of the formation of the Oort Cloud for 4.5 Gyrs. In each simulation, the solar…
Comet nuclei in the outer Solar system are constantly irradiated by cosmic rays at low temperatures. Accumulated high concentrations of radicals can undergo fast recombination with significant heating of cometary surface layers. We present…
The absolute magnitude and perihelion distributions of long-period comets are derived, using data from the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey. The results are surprising in three ways. Firstly, the flux of comets through…
Impact basins identified by Mariner 10 and Messenger flyby images provide us a fossilized record of the impactor flux of asteroids on Mercury during the last stages of the early Solar System. The distribution of these basins is not uniform…
Intense bombardment of solar system planets in the immediate aftermath of protoplanetary disk dissipation has played a key role in their atmospheric evolution. During this epoch, energetic collisions will have removed significant masses of…
The intensity and effects of early impact bombardment on the major satellites of the giant planets during an episode of giant planet migration is still poorly known. We use a combination of dynamical N-body and Monte Carlo simulations to…
Planet formation is accompanied by the formation of comet clouds. In systems where planets migrate on rapid timescales, the diffusive evolution of comet orbits may stall, resulting in a comet cloud intermediate between a flattened Kuiper…
Globally disruptive events include asteroid/comet impacts, large igneous provinces and glaciations, all of which have been considered as contributors to mass extinctions. Understanding the overall relationship between the timings of the…
Cometary impacts play an important role in the early evolution of Earth, and other terrestrial exoplanets. Here, we present a numerical model for the interaction of weak, low-density cometary impactors with planetary atmospheres, which…
In the late stages of accretion leading up to the formation of planetesimals, particles grew to pebbles the size of 1-mm to tens of cm. That is the same size range that dominates the present-day comet mass loss. Meteoroids that size cause…
This thesis assesses the influence of astronomical phenomena on the Earth's biosphere and climate. I examine in particular the relevance of both the path of the Sun through the Galaxy and the evolution of the Earth's orbital parameters in…
The paper deals with several properties of the Oort cloud of comets. Sun, Galaxy (and Jupiter) gravitationally act on the comets. New physical model of galactic tide is considered. The main results can be summarized as follows: 1. Mass of…
The Gaia space telescope has transformed our understanding of random stellar encounters with the Solar System. This study examines how such perturbations influence the most eccentric comets in the Oort Cloud (OC), a thermalized reservoir of…