Related papers: Collision rates in the present-day Kuiper Belt and…

The flyby of Pluto and Charon by the New Horizons spacecraft provided high-resolution images of cratered surfaces embedded in the Kuiper belt, an extensive region of bodies orbiting beyond Neptune. Impact craters on Pluto and Charon were…

The Kuiper Belt (KB) region of the solar system, stretching from 30 to at least 50 AU, contains Pluto-Charon, some ~105 Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) larger than 100 km in diameter, and myriad smaller bodies produced by collisions among KBOs…

In preparation for the Jan 1/2019 encounter between the New Horizons spacecraft and the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, we provide estimates of the expected impact crater surface density on the Kuiper Belt object. Using the observed crater…

Collisions are a major modification process over the history of the Kuiper Belt. Recent work illuminates the complex array of possible outcomes of individual collisions onto porous, volatile bodies. The cumulative effects of such collisions…

We aim to compute the impact rates for objects with a diameter of 1 km onto the regular satellites of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus using our latest dynamical simulations of the evolution of outer solar system coupled with the best estimates…

We numerically investigate the possibility that a close stellar encounter could account for the high inclinations of the Kuiper belt, as originally proposed by Ida, Larwood and Burkert, however we consider encounters with pericenters within…

A modified Baker-Nunn camera was used to conduct a wide-field survey of 1428 square degrees of sky near the ecliptic in search of bright Kuiper Belt objects and Centaurs. This area is an order of magnitude larger than any previously…

We combine several constraints provided by the crater records on Arrokoth and the worlds of the Pluto system to compute the size-frequency distribution (SFD) of the crater production function for craters with diameter D<10km. For this…

This paper presents the results of collisional evolution calculations for the Kuiper belt starting from an initial size distribution similar to that produced by accretion simulations of that region - a steep power-law large object size…

The Kuiper belt objects, the Centaurs, and the Jupiter-family comets form an evolutionary continuum of small outer Solar System objects, and their study allows us to gain insight into the history and evolution of the Solar System. Broadband…

The population of the Kuiper Belt within 50 AU of the Sun has likely been severely depleted by gravitational perturbations from the giant planets, particularly Neptune. The density of Kuiper Belt objects is expected to be two orders of…

Considering effects of tidal plus centrifugal stress acting on icy-rocks and the tensile strength thereof, icy-rocks being in the density range (1-2.4) g cm-3 which had come into existence as collisional ejecta (debris) in the vicinity of…

Centaurs are solar system objects with orbits situated among the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. Centaurs represent one of the sources of Near-Earth Objects. Thus, it is crucial to understand their orbital evolution which in some cases might…

We study the effects of an encounter between a wandering cosmic object (WCO) of 0.1 solar mass and some Kuiperian Objects (KO). First, we let the WCO cross the out-skirt of ou Kuiper belt. Such encounters can produce two types of solar…

Kuiper Belt objects with absolute magnitude less than 3 (radius $\gtrsim$500 km), the dwarf planets, have a range of different ice/rock ratios, and are more rock-rich than their smaller counterparts. Many of these objects have moons, which…

The outcome of collisions between small icy bodies, such as Kuiper belt objects, is poorly understood and yet a critical component of the evolution of the trans-Neptunian region. The expected physical properties of outer solar system…

I find evidence for clustering in age of well-dated impact craters over the last 500 Myr. At least nine impact episodes are identified, with durations whose upper limits are set by the dating accuracy of the craters. Their amplitudes and…

Recently, it has been discovered that at least 1% of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are accompanied by large satellites. Here we examine the energetics of KBO satellite formation via collisions, finding collisions require a dynamically excited…

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,…

We consider whether equilibrium size distributions from collisional cascades match the frequency of impactors derived from New Horizons crater counts on Charon (Singer et al 2019). Using an analytic model and a suite of numerical…