The Scattered Disk as the Source of the Jupiter Family Comets
By Kathryn Volk, R. Malhotra. 2008
133 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The short-period Jupiter family comets (JFCs) are thought to originate in the Kuiper Belt; specifically, a dynamical subclass of the Kuiper Belt known as the “scattered disk” is argued to be the dominant source of JFCs. However, the best estimates from observational surveys indicate that this source may fall short by more than 2 orders of magnitude of the estimates obtained from theoretical models of the dynamical evolution of Kuiper Belt objects into JFCs. We reexamine the scattered disk as a source of the JFCs and make a rigorous estimate of the discrepancy. We find that the uncertainties in the dynamical models combined with a change in the size distribution function of the scattered disk at faint magnitudes (small sizes) beyond the current observational limit offer a possible but problematic resolution to the discrepancy. We discuss several other possibilities: that the present population of JFCs is a large fluctuation above their long-term average, that larger scattered disk objects tidally break up into multiple fragments during close planetary encounters as their orbits evolve from the trans-Neptune zone to near Jupiter, or that there are alternative source populations that contribute significantly to the JFCs. Well-characterized observational investigations of the Centaurs, objects that are transitioning between the trans-Neptune Kuiper Belt region and the inner solar system, can test the predictions of the non-steady state and the tidal breakup hypotheses. The classical and resonant classes of the Kuiper Belt are worth reconsideration as significant additional or alternate sources of the JFCs.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/379f01d298e4e38a4df664c9dd5e584bf8ad3846
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
- A. Morbidelli
- D. Nesvorný
- David Vokrouhlický
- Harold Levison
- William Bottke
- N. Kaib
- L. Dones
- H. Rickman
Citations in the corpus
- THE ACTIVE CENTAURS (2006, background): “The source is popularly identified with the so-called scattered Kuiper belt objects but other transNeptunian populations, or even completely different source regions, may be implicated (c.f. Volk and Malhotra 2008).”
- Origin and Evolution of Short-period Comets (2017, background): “It is therefore difficult to establish whether there are enough small objects in any trans-Neptunian reservoir to provide the source of comets (e.g., Volk & Malhotra 2008).”
- The primordial nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (2015, methodology): “The Resc–value is uncertain and has been evaluated as Resc = (1 − 2) × 10−10 yr−1 (Volk & Malhotra 2008), Resc = 2.7×10−10 yr−1 (Duncan & Levison 1997; Levison et al. 2006), Resc = 5×10−10 yr−1 (Di Sisto & Brunini 2007), and Resc = 9.3×10−10 yr−1 (Emel’yanenko et al. 2004).”