Related papers: The impact hazard from small asteroids: current pr…
Context: Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) in Earth-crossing orbits pose a constant threat to life on Earth. Several mitigation methods have been proposed, and the most feasible technique appears to be the disintegration of the impactor…
It is generally accepted today that our solar system has undergone a phase during which the orbits of the giant planets became very unstable. In recent years, many studies have identified traces of this event and have provided reasonable…
Young asteroid families are unique sources of information about fragmentation physics and the structure of their parent bodies, since their physical properties have not changed much since their birth. Families have different properties such…
We have evaluated the rate at which the asteroid belt is losing material, and how it splits between macroscopic bodies and meteoritic dust. The mass loss process is due to the injection of asteroid fragments into unstable dynamical regions,…
The asteroids are the major source of potential impactors on the Earth today. It has long been assumed that the giant planet Jupiter acts as a shield, significantly lowering the impact rate on the Earth from both cometary and asteroidal…
The interest in the problem of small asteroids observed shortly before a deep close approach or an impact with the Earth has grown a lot in recent years. Since the observational dataset of such objects is very limited, they deserve…
Some asteroids eject dust, producing transient, comet-like comae and tails; these are the active asteroids. The causes of activity in this newly-identified population are many and varied. They include impact ejection and disruption,…
This contribution is a first step aiming to address a general question: what can be concluded on impact craters which exist on various planetary system objects, by combining astronomical data and known theoretical results from solid state…
Photometric observations of asteroids show that some of them are in non-principal axis rotation state (free precession), called tumbling. Collisions between asteroids have been proposed as a possible asteroid rotation excitation mechanism.…
The overall shape, internal structure and surface morphology of small bodies such as asteroids and comets are determined to a large degree by the last global-scale impact or disruption event. Depending on the specific energy, impacts lead…
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…
A framework for the theoretical and analytical understanding of the impact crater-size frequency distribution is developed and applied to observed data from Mars and Earth. The analitical model derived gives the crater population,N, as a…
An asteroid impact is a low probability event with potentially devastating consequences. The Asteroid Risk Mitigation Optimization and Research (ARMOR) software tool calculates whether a colliding asteroid experiences an airburst or surface…
We investigate the effects of low--velocity impacts of rocks and boulders, originally released after the DART impact, on the surface of Didymos and the dynamics of dust particles released by those impacts. We determine if any of those…
Understanding the collisional fragmentation and subsequent reaccumulation of fragments is crucial for studies of the formation and evolution of the small-body populations. Using an SPH / N-body approach, we investigate the size-frequency…
We review the present status of our research and understanding regarding the dynamics and the statistical properties of earthquakes, mainly from a statistical physical viewpoint. Emphasis is put both on the physics of friction and fracture,…
In the last decade, thanks to the development of sophisticated numerical codes, major breakthroughs have been achieved in our understanding of the formation of asteroid families by catastrophic disruption of large parent bodies. In this…
Asteroids and meteorites provide key evidence on the formation of planetesimals in the Solar System. Asteroids are traditionally thought to form in a bottom-up process by coagulation within a population of initially km-scale planetesimals.…
Most asteroids with a diameter larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ are rubble piles i.e. consisting of more than one solid object. All asteroids are rotating but almost all asteroids larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ rotate with a period longer…
A prescription for the fragment size distribution resulting from dust grain collisions is essential when modelling a range of astrophysical systems, such as debris disks and planetary rings. While the slope of the fragment size distribution…