Lecturer: Mikael Granvik, LTU Date: 2019-11-21 10:00 Place: Aniara
Understanding the unexpected destruction of near-Earth object
For more than two decades the general assumption for the fate of
near-Earth objects (NEOs) was that most of them plunge into the Sun,
roughly a quarter are cleared by Jupiter, and the remaining few
percent impact the terrestrial planets, most often the Earth. A more
complex picture for the fate of NEOs is starting to emerge as a result
of recent efforts to understand their debiased orbit and absolute
magnitude distributions. A particularly interesting phenomenon is the
destruction of asteroids at small perihelion distances. A detailed
physical model of this phenomenon will allow us to place useful
constraints on, at least, the bulk composition of asteroids, and
perhaps also on their interior structure. I will summarize our current
knowledge of the disruption mechanism(s), and explain how survey
observations and targeted follow-up observations of NEOs, meteor and
fireball data, numerical modeling, and laboratory experiments in LTU's
Asteroid Engineering Lab help us understand the mechanism. Finally, I
will also describe a space mission concept that would follow an NEO
through its perihelion passage and thus provide direct information
about the disruption process.
Created 2019-09-06 16:35:19 by Uwe Raffalski Last changed 2019-11-19 11:01:39 by Uwe Raffalski
