6 February 2003
Collision course: How shattered parents start asteroid families
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| Cover image: D. C. Richardson, W. Benz & P. Michel. |
More than 20 asteroid families have been identified in the main asteroid belt, each the result of collisional break-up of a much larger parent body. The recently discovered Karin family of asteroids is relatively young (from a collision that took place about 5 million years ago) and unaffected by orbital evolution. This provides an opportunity to deduce details of the internal structure of the parent bodies from observational data. Numerical simulations of the Karin collision suggest the parent body was itself internally fragmented and that the collision produced thousands of fragments, perhaps including near-Earth asteroids and meteorites.
Disruption of fragmented parent bodies as the origin of asteroid families
PATRICK MICHEL, WILLY BENZ & DEREK C. RICHARDSON
Nature 421, 608–611 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01364
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