Densities of the Kuiper Belt's Dwarf Planets

Image: Artist's view of Kuiper belt object. Credit: NASA and G. Bacon (STSci)

Kuiper Belt objects with absolute magnitude less than 3 (radius >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 suggests that collisions may have played a role in modifying their compositions.

In a recent paper (Barr & Schwamb 2016) the authors show that the dwarf planets fall into two categories when analysed by their mean densities and satellite-to-primary size ratio. Systems with large moons, such as Pluto/Charon and Orcus/Vanth, can form in low-velocity grazing collisions in which both bodies retain their compositions.

They propose that these systems retain a primordial composition, with a density of about 1.8 g/cm³. Triton, thought to be a captured KBO, could have lost enough ice during its early orbital evolution to explain its rock-enrichment relative to the primordial material. Systems with small moons, Eris, Haumea, and Quaoar, formed from a different type of collision in which icy material, perhaps a few tens of percent of the total colliding mass, is lost. The fragments would not remain in physical or dynamical proximity to the parent body. The ice loss process has not yet been demonstrated numerically, which could be due to the paucity of KBO origin simulations, or missing physical processes in the impact models. If our hypothesis is correct, we predict that large KBOs with small moons should be denser than the primordial material, and that the mean density of Orcus should be close to the primordial value.

Barr & Schwamb 2016 (preprint) - Interpreting the Densities of the Kuiper Belt's Dwarf Planets - (arXiv)

Comments

A METHOD TO TEST THE EXISTENCE OF REGULAR BLACK HOLES

Illustration of a black hole. Image Credit & Copyright: Alain Riazuelo The existence of the singularity is an intrinsic problem of the General Relativity (GR). At the fundamentally level, the resolution of the problem of the singularity lies with the expectation that under situations where quantum effects become strong, the behavior of gravity could possibly greatly deviate from that predicted by the classical theory of GR. Regular black hole solution are proposed with the same spacetime geometry outside the horizon as the traditional black hole, but bears no singularity inside. Whether or not black hole singularities should exist, they would be covered by the black hole horizon. The black hole horizon serves as an information curtain hindering outside observers from directly observing the interior structure of the black hole, and determining that whether or not the black hole singularity does really exist. A method is needed to check the correctness of the new constructions ...

CONSTRAINTS ON THE LOCATION OF A POSSIBLE 9TH PLANET

Image: The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Such an orbital alignment can only be maintained by some outside force, Batygin and Brown say. Their paper argues that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration. Credit: Caltech The astronomers have noticed some of the dwarf planets and other small, icy objects tend to follow orbits that cluster together. To explain the unusual distribution of these Kuiper Belt objects, several authors have advocated the existence of a superEarth planet in the outer solar system ( planet Nine or planet X ).

CONTAMINATION BY SUPERNOVAE IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Only a small amount of the supernovae products remains trapped within globular clusters and this "catch" only occurs in the most massive cases (mass cluster ≥ 10^6 solar masses).

SpaceTime

Search This Blog