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Efficient delivery of meteorites to the Earth from a wide range of asteroid parent bodies

Nature volume 407, pages 606–608 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

Almost all meteorites come from asteroids, but identifying their specific parent bodies, and modelling their transport to the Earth, has proved to be difficult1,2. The usual model1,3,4 of delivery through orbital resonances with the major planets5,6 has recently been shown7,8,9,10 to deplete the supply of meteorites much too rapidly to explain either the observed flux at the Earth, or the length of time the meteorites have spent in space (as measured by cosmic-ray exposure ages). Independently, it has been found that a force arising from anisotropically emitted thermal radiation from asteroidal fragments (the ‘Yarkovsky effect’) influences the fragments' orbits in important ways11,12,13,14. Here we report the results of a detailed model for the transport of meteorites to the Earth, which includes the Yarkovsky effect and collisional evolution of the asteroidal fragments. We find that the Yarkovsky effect significantly increases the efficiency of the delivery of meteorites to the Earth, while at the same time allowing a much wider range of asteroids to contribute to the flux of meteorites. Our model also reproduces the observed distribution15,16 of cosmic-ray exposure ages of stony meteorites.

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Figure 1: The expected flux of fragments from Hebe (for K = 0.1 W m-1 K-1) versus time.
Figure 2: Comparison of the modelled and observed cosmic-ray exposure (CRE) age distributions for three different meteorite types.

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Acknowledgements

This Letter is dedicated to the memory of P.F., who passed away on 25 March 2000. Our understanding of the role of the Yarkovsky effect in the history of the Solar System is only one of many contributions by P.F. to modern planetology. We thank J. A. Burns and C. R. Chapman for comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Astronomy, Charles University, Holešovickách 2, Prague, 18000 , Czech Republic

    D. Vokrouhlický

  2. Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università da Trieste, Trieste, Italy

    P. Farinella

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  1. D. Vokrouhlický
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  2. P. Farinella
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Vokrouhlický, D., Farinella, P. Efficient delivery of meteorites to the Earth from a wide range of asteroid parent bodies. Nature 407, 606–608 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35036528

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