Related papers: Global Scale Impacts
A statistical analysis of brightness variability of asteroids reveals how their shapes evolve from elongated to rough spheroidal forms, presumably driven by impact-related phenomena. Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object…
An asteroid family is typically formed when a larger parent body undergoes a catastrophic collisional disruption, and as such family members are expected to show physical properties that closely trace the composition and mineralogical…
Terrestrial planets are believed to be formed via giant impacts of Mars-sized protoplanets. Planets formed via giant impacts have highly eccentric orbits. A swarm of planetesimals around the planets may lead to eccentricity damping for the…
Giant impacts dominate the final stages of terrestrial planet formation and set the configuration and compositions of the final system of planets. A giant impact is believed to be responsible for the formation of Earth's Moon, but the…
We report on recent analyses of different pieces of data, which exhibit Geometrical Scaling (GS) and its breaking. GS is a consequence of the existence of an intermediate energy scale, called saturation momentum, and allows to relate data…
We examine the mechanisms by which atmosphere can be eroded by giant impacts onto Earth-like planets with thin atmospheres, using 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations with sufficient resolution to directly model the fate of…
From small seeds falling from trees to asteroids colliding with planets and moons, the impact of projectiles onto granular targets occurs in nature at different scales. In this paper, we investigate open questions in the mechanics of…
Observations suggest that impactors and volcanism are connected, but the mechanism that links these events is unknown. This research proposes the impact exsolution hypothesis to explain how planetary scale collisions trigger volcanism. This…
This paper presents a brief review and latest results of the work that has been carried out by the Planetary Science community in order to understand that role of the geotechnical properties of granular asteroids (commonly known as…
More than a half of asteroids in the main belt have irregular shapes with the ratios of the minor to major axis lengths less than 0.6. One of the mechanisms to create such shapes is collisions between asteroids. The relationship between…
We investigate the melt production of planetary impacts as a function of planet size ($R/R_\mathrm{Earth}$=0.1-1.5), impactor size ($L$=1-1000 km), and core size ratio ($R_\mathrm{core}/R$=0.2-0.8) using a combination of parameterized…
Context: Planets in accretion disks can excite spiral shocks, and---if massive enough---open gaps in their vicinity. Both of these effects can influence the overall disk thermal structure. Aims: We model planets of different masses and…
Given a primary interest in "mitigation of the potential hazard" of near-Earth objects impacting the Earth, the subject of characterization takes on an aspect not normally present when considering asteroids as abstract bodies. Many…
When density fluctuations collapse gravitationally out of the expanding cosmological background universe to form galaxies, the secondary energy release which results can affect their subsequent evolution profoundly. We focus here on the…
Planet formation encompasses processes that span a remarkable 40 magnitudes in mass, ranging from collisions between micron-sized grains inherited from the ISM to the accretion of gas by giant planets. The planet formation process takes…
Planet--Planet scattering is an efficient and robust dynamical mechanism for producing eccentric exoplanets. Coupled to tidal interactions with the central star, it can also explain close--in giant planets on circularized and potentially…
Small high-speed impact craters formed in rocks, ice, and other brittle materials consist of an outer, broad shallow concentric region formed by tensile fracture (spall), surrounding a smaller central "pit" crater of greater depth. On the…
The members of asteroid families have various shapes. We investigate the origin of their shapes by high-resolution impact simulations for catastrophic disruptions using a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code. Collisional remnants produced…
Most meteorites are fragments from recent collisions experienced in the asteroid belt. In such a hyper-velocity collision, the smaller collision partner is destroyed, whereas a crater on the asteroid is formed or it is entirely disrupted,…
The final stage of gas giant formation involves accreting gas from the parent protoplanetary disk. In general, the infalling gas likely approaches a free-fall velocity, creating an accretion shock, leading to strong shock heating and…