What is the significance of the Kirkwood gaps?
Specific regions in the asteroid belt where few asteroids are found. The Kirkwood gaps are believed to have formed as a consequence of gravitational interactions of asteroids with Jupiter, which resulted in the movement of the asteroids from within this area into another orbit, leaving the area sparsely populated.
Where are Kirkwood gaps found?
asteroid belt
12.3 . Most of the asteroids are found in the asteroid belt that lies between 2.2 and 3.3 AU from the Sun, but here are very few asteroids at certain distances from the Sun. These Kirkwood gaps have orbital periods of 1/4, 1/3, 2/5, 3/7 and 1/2 of Jupiter’s orbital period.
What asteroids are found in the Kirkwood gaps?
All asteroids with orbital distances that form a simple ratio with that of Jupiter will be affected by such gravitational perturbations. Key Kirkwood gaps occur at the 2:1, 3:1, 5:2, and 7:3 orbital resonances, while major concentrations of asteroids are found at the 3:2 and 1:1 (Trojan asteroids) orbital resonances.
What did Kirkwood discover?
This discovery earned Kirkwood an international reputation among astronomers; he was dubbed “the American Kepler” by Sears Cook Walker, who claimed that Kirkwood’s Law proved the widely held Solar Nebula Theory….
| Daniel Kirkwood | |
|---|---|
| Institutions | University of Delaware Indiana University Jefferson College Stanford University |
Can asteroids enter Kirkwood gaps?
The Kirkwood gaps are the primal source of near-Earth asteroids. Collisions between asteroids have their orbits perturbed by the Yarkovsky effect, and as such, they drift into the Kirkwood gaps.
Are Kirkwood gaps stable?
Most of the Kirkwood gaps are depleted, unlike the mean-motion resonances (MMR) of Neptune or Jupiter’s 3:2 resonance, that retain objects captured during the giant planet migration of the Nice model. The 2:1 MMR has a few relatively stable islands within the resonance, however.
Is it possible for an asteroid to hit Earth?
Asteroids with a 1 km (0.62 mi) diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years on average. Large collisions – with 5 km (3 mi) objects – happen approximately once every twenty million years.
What would happen if an asteroid hit the sun?
Nothing will happen. The mass and the heat of the Sun are of such magnitude that even the biggest object in the solar system, Jupiter, hitting the Sun would cause just a momentary hiccup, and comets are actually tiny objects in the scale of the solar system.