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Interplanetary dust

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Abstract

The interplanetary dust cloud, total mass 1010–1020 g in round figures, originates as fragments of comets and produces a mean flux at the earth-moon system in the range 10−13–10−12 g m−2 s−1. Over 2/3 of the mass consists of particles with individual weights 10−3 to 10−6 g. They are fragile, are continually broken up into smaller pieces by collisions, and have a chemical composition similar to that assumed as the average for the entire solar system. The cloud extends to roughly 3 a.u. from the sun in the ecliptic plane, with a particle space density falling off as r −v, where r is distance from the sun and v is in the range 1 to 1.5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

    Peter M. Millman

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  1. Peter M. Millman
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It is a pleasure to acknowledge profitable discussions with the following colleagues while preparing this paper: F. Arnold, O.E. Berg, D.E. Brownlee, A.F. Cook, H. Fechtig, R.H. Giese, E. Grün, I. Halliday, M. Hanner, Z. Sekanina. Part of this work was carried out while in Heidelberg as a consultant at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik.

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Millman, P.M. Interplanetary dust. Naturwissenschaften 66, 134–139 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00368706

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