Related papers: Impact crater formation: a simple application of s…
Hot liquid metal drops impacting onto a cold substrate solidify during their subsequent spreading. Here we experimentally study the influence of solidification on the outcome of an impact event. Liquid tin drops are impacted onto sapphire…
This work analyzes the energetics of asteroid rubble piles in order to understand what asteroid morphologies should naturally arise from their formation and evolution process. In doing this, a phase diagram is developed that maps out the…
Atom arrangement plays a critical role in determining material properties. It is, therefore, essential for materials science and engineering to identify and characterize distinct atom configurations. Currently, crystal structures can be…
Measurements of the time of arrival of shock waves from explosions can serve as powerful markers of the evolution of the shock front for determining crucial parameters driving the blast. Using standard theoretical tools and a simple ansatz…
An asteroid family forms as a result of a collision between an impactor and a parent body. The fragments with ejection speeds higher than the escape velocity from the parent body can escape its gravitational pull. The cloud of escaping…
Giant impacts dominate the late stages of accretion of rocky planets. They contribute to the heating, melting, and sometimes vaporizing of the bodies involved in the impacts. Due to fractionation during melting and vaporization,…
Numerous small bodies inevitably lead to cratering impacts on large planetary bodies during planet formation and evolution. As a consequence of these small impacts, a fraction of the target material escapes from the gravity of the large…
Orbit-determination programs find the orbit solution that best fits a set of observations by minimizing the RMS of the residuals of the fit. For near-Earth asteroids, the uncertainty of the orbit solution may be compatible with trajectories…
Most major planetary bodies in the solar system rotate in the same direction as their orbital motion: their spin is prograde. Theoretical studies to explain the direction as well as the magnitude of the spin vector have had mixed success.…
Planets are expected to conclude their growth through a series of giant impacts: energetic, global events that significantly alter planetary composition and evolution. Computer models and theory have elucidated the diverse outcomes of giant…
This brief overview stresses the importance of laboratory data and theory in analyzing astronomical observations and understanding the physical and chemical processes that drive the astrophysical phenomena in our Universe. This includes…
We investigate induced oscillations by the gravitational field of a fast stellar object, such as a neutron star or a black-hole in a near miss collision with another star. Non-adiabatic collision conditions may lead to large amplitude…
In order to improve our understanding of landing on small bodies and of asteroid evolution, we use our novel drop tower facility to perform low-velocity (2-40 cm s^-1), shallow impact experiments of a 10 cm diameter aluminum sphere into…
A simple method for determining the thermal component of the EOS of solids under high pressure is proposed.Application to the interior of the Earth gives results in agreement with recent geophysical data.
We use a simple, collision-based, discrete, random abrasion model to compute the profiles for the stoss faces in a bedrock abrasion process. The model is the discrete equivalent of the generalized version of a classical, collision based…
The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…
Current observations of double neutron stars provide us with a wealth of information that we can use to investigate their evolutionary history and the physical conditions of neutron star formation. Understanding this history and formation…
The penetration by a gravity driven impact of a solid sphere into a granular medium is studied by two-dimensional simulations. The scaling laws observed experimentally for both the final penetration depth and the stopping time with the…
The small ($\le$ 135 km mean radius) saturnian satellites are closely related to the rings and together they constitute a complex dynamical system where formation and destruction mechanisms compete against each other. We model the cratering…
Direct collisions between finite-sized particles occur commonly in many areas of astrophysics. Such collisions are typically mediated by chaotic, bound gravitational interactions involving small numbers of particles. An important…