Related papers: Meteoroid Structure and Fragmentation
Taurid meteor shower produces prolonged but usually low activity every October and November. In some years, however, the activity is significantly enhanced. Previous studies based on long-term activity statistics concluded that the…
Satellites of asteroids have been discovered in nearly every known small body population, and a remarkable aspect of the known satellites is the diversity of their properties. They tell a story of vast differences in formation and evolution…
While contact binary objects are common in the solar system, their formation mechanism is unclear. In this work we examine several contact binaries and calculate the necessary strength parameters that allow the two lobes to merge without…
The complexity of condensed matter arises from emergent behaviors that cannot be understood by analyzing individual constituents in isolation. While traditional condensed-matter approaches-developed primarily for ideal crystalline…
Motivated by recent experiments on colloidal systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions, we simulate a two-dimensional system of colloids with competing interactions that can undergo fragmentation. In the absence of any…
The examination of the physical properties of chondrules has generally received less emphasis than other properties of meteorites such as their mineralogy, petrology, and chemical and isotopic compositions. Among the various physical…
Meteoroids pose one of the largest risks to spacecraft outside of low Earth orbit. In order to correctly predict the rate at which meteoroids impact and damage spacecraft, environment models must describe the mass, directionality, velocity,…
Numerical simulations of asteroid break-ups, including both the fragmentation of the parent body and the gravitational interactions between the fragments, have allowed us to reproduce successfully the main properties of asteroid families…
The possibility that some meteoroids in the size range 1 - 20 meters are rubble piles i.e. assembles of boulders of various sizes held together only by small van der Waals forces, is investigated. Such meteoroids are expected to start…
The study of the last stages of planet formation, also known as debris disks, is fundamental to place constrains on the formation of planetary sized bodies. Debris disks are composed of dust and occasionally small amounts of gas, both…
The locations of the fully despun, double synchronous end states of tidal evolution are derived for spherical components. With the exception of nearly equal-mass binaries, binary asteroid systems are in the midst of lengthy tidal…
In the first paper of this series we examined existing methods of optical meteor trajectory estimation and developed a novel method which simultaneously uses both the geometry and the dynamics of meteors to constrain their trajectories. We…
We analyze infrasound signals from 71 bright meteors simultaneously detected by video to investigate the phenomenology and characteristics of meteor-generated near-field infrasound and shock production. A taxonomy for meteor generated…
Global scale impacts modify the physical or thermal state of a substantial fraction of a target asteroid. Specific effects include accretion, family formation, reshaping, mixing and layering, shock and frictional heating, fragmentation,…
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…
The final stage of planet formation is dominated by collisions between planetary embryos. The dynamics of this stage determine the orbital configuration and the mass and composition of planets in the system. In the solar system, late giant…
The luminous efficiency of meteors is poorly known, but critical for determining the meteoroid mass. We present an uncertainty analysis of the luminous efficiency as determined by the classical ablation equations, and suggest a possible…
Meteor and bolide phenomena caused by the atmospheric ablation of incoming meteoroids are predicted to occur at the planet Venus. Their systematic observation would allow to measure and compare the sub-mm to m meteoroid flux at different…
The distributions of dark matter and baryons in the Universe are known to be very different: the dark matter resides in extended halos, while a significant fraction of the baryons have radiated away much of their initial energy and fallen…
Comets are pristine remnants of the Solar system, composed of dust and ice. They remain inactive and undetectable for most of their orbit due to low temperatures. However, as they approach the Sun, volatile materials sublimate, expelling…