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Delivery of Material from the Asteroid Belt

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Accretion of Extraterrestrial Matter Throughout Earth’s History

Abstract

The delivery of bodies from the main asteroid belt to Earth-crossing orbits requires a complex scenario that involves disruptive asteroidal collisions as well as gravitational and non-gravitational dynamical transport processes. We review the recent developments in this field that have lead to substantial modifications of the scenario envisaged until the early 1990s. We avoid discussion of still poorly understood primordial delivery of material onto the Earth before the “Late Heavy Bombardment” period and focus on the transport mechanism at later stages of the solar system evolution. It now appears that the delivery process is not the same for meter-sized meteorites and kilometer-sized near-Earth asteroids, and that a variety of resonant effects play a significant role on different time scales. Although it seems likely that the main asteroid belt can supply the vast majority of the macroscopic bodies hitting the Earth, a quantitative model of this process requires further progress in both the theoretical and the observational areas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, University of Trieste, Italy

    Paolo Farinella

  2. Institute of Astronomy, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    David Vokrouhlický

  3. Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Nice, France

    Alessandro Morbidelli

Authors
  1. Paolo Farinella
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  2. David Vokrouhlický
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  3. Alessandro Morbidelli
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA

    Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink

  2. Earth Sciences Center, University of Getenburg, Gotenburg, Sweden

    Birger Schmitz

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Farinella, P., Vokrouhlický, D., Morbidelli, A. (2001). Delivery of Material from the Asteroid Belt. In: Peucker-Ehrenbrink, B., Schmitz, B. (eds) Accretion of Extraterrestrial Matter Throughout Earth’s History. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8694-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8694-8_3

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