![]() In the process, it swept the asteroid belt nearly clean, leaving only a tenth of one percent of its original population.Īs the planets migrated, they stirred the contents of the solar system. Jupiter may have moved as close to the Sun as Mars is now. In the early history of our solar system the giant planets ran amok, migrating inward and outward substantially. That traditional view changed as astronomers recognized that the current residents of the main asteroid belt weren't all there from the start. Their compositions seemed to vary methodically from drier to wetter, due to the drop in temperature as you move away from the Sun. Traditionally, they were viewed as the pieces of a failed planet that was prevented from forming by the influence of Jupiter's powerful gravity. Millions of asteroids circle the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in a region known as the main asteroid belt. "We found that the giant planets shook up the asteroids like flakes in a snow globe," says lead author Francesca DeMeo, a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. New clues to this tumultuous past come from the asteroid belt. Giant planets migrated in and out, tossing interplanetary flotsam and jetsam far and wide. However, the true history of the solar system is more riotous. Our solar system seems like a neat and orderly place, with small, rocky worlds near the Sun and big, gaseous worlds farther out, all eight planets following orbital paths unchanged since they formed. Objects from as close to the Sun as Mercury, and as far out as Neptune, all collected in the main asteroid belt, leading to the diverse composition we see today. As the gas giant planets migrated, they stirred the contents of the solar system. Review the relevance of asteroids and their compositions in their greaterĬontext within our Solar System and beyond.Image: In this artist's conception, Jupiter's migration through the solar system has swept asteroids out of stable orbits, sending them careening into one another. State of understanding of these questions to form the big picture of theįormation and evolution of asteroids in the Main Belt. This chapter also reviews the major outstanding questions relating toĪsteroid compositions and distributions and summarizes the progress and current Of the heliocentric distribution of asteroid compositions seen in the Main Belt Reviews the advancements on the fronts of asteroid compositionalĬharacterization, meteorite measurements, and dynamical theories in the context Through evolutionary processes after Solar System formation. Planetesimals are primordial, but instead those belts were formed and sculpted The entire Solar System?" No longer is the leading theory that two belts of Has changed from "What was the original compositional gradient of the Asteroidīelt?" to "What was the original compositional gradient of small bodies across ![]() ![]() ![]() Put in context with meteorite measurements and dynamical models, a newĪnd more complete picture of Solar System evolution has emerged. Of data has allowed us to create a new global picture of the Main Asteroidīelt. Over 100,000 with some measurement of physical characterization. DeMeo and 4 other authors Download PDF Abstract: The past decade has brought major improvements in large-scale asteroidĭiscovery and characterization with over half a million known asteroids and Download a PDF of the paper titled The Compositional Structure of the Asteroid Belt, by Francesca E. ![]()
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