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Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud

We have observed C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS), a recently discovered object on a cometary orbit coming from the Oort cloud that is physically similar to an inner main belt rocky S-type asteroid. Recent dynamical models successfully reproduce the key characteristics of our current solar system; some of thes...

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Autores principales: Meech, Karen J., Yang, Bin, Kleyna, Jan, Hainaut, Olivier R., Berdyugina, Svetlana, Keane, Jacqueline V., Micheli, Marco, Morbidelli, Alessandro, Wainscoat, Richard J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4928888/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27386512
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600038
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author Meech, Karen J.
Yang, Bin
Kleyna, Jan
Hainaut, Olivier R.
Berdyugina, Svetlana
Keane, Jacqueline V.
Micheli, Marco
Morbidelli, Alessandro
Wainscoat, Richard J.
author_facet Meech, Karen J.
Yang, Bin
Kleyna, Jan
Hainaut, Olivier R.
Berdyugina, Svetlana
Keane, Jacqueline V.
Micheli, Marco
Morbidelli, Alessandro
Wainscoat, Richard J.
author_sort Meech, Karen J.
collection PubMed
description We have observed C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS), a recently discovered object on a cometary orbit coming from the Oort cloud that is physically similar to an inner main belt rocky S-type asteroid. Recent dynamical models successfully reproduce the key characteristics of our current solar system; some of these models require significant migration of the giant planets, whereas others do not. These models provide different predictions on the presence of rocky material expelled from the inner solar system in the Oort cloud. C/2014 S3 could be the key to verifying these predictions of the migration-based dynamical models. Furthermore, this object displays a very faint, weak level of comet-like activity, five to six orders of magnitude less than that of typical ice-rich comets on similar Orbits coming from the Oort cloud. For the nearly tailless appearance, we are calling C/2014 S3 a Manx object. Various arguments convince us that this activity is produced by sublimation of volatile ice, that is, normal cometary activity. The activity implies that C/2014 S3 has retained a tiny fraction of the water that is expected to be present at its formation distance in the inner solar system. We may be looking at fresh inner solar system Earth-forming material that was ejected from the inner solar system and preserved for billions of years in the Oort cloud.
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spelling pubmed-49288882016-07-06 Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud Meech, Karen J. Yang, Bin Kleyna, Jan Hainaut, Olivier R. Berdyugina, Svetlana Keane, Jacqueline V. Micheli, Marco Morbidelli, Alessandro Wainscoat, Richard J. Sci Adv Research Articles We have observed C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS), a recently discovered object on a cometary orbit coming from the Oort cloud that is physically similar to an inner main belt rocky S-type asteroid. Recent dynamical models successfully reproduce the key characteristics of our current solar system; some of these models require significant migration of the giant planets, whereas others do not. These models provide different predictions on the presence of rocky material expelled from the inner solar system in the Oort cloud. C/2014 S3 could be the key to verifying these predictions of the migration-based dynamical models. Furthermore, this object displays a very faint, weak level of comet-like activity, five to six orders of magnitude less than that of typical ice-rich comets on similar Orbits coming from the Oort cloud. For the nearly tailless appearance, we are calling C/2014 S3 a Manx object. Various arguments convince us that this activity is produced by sublimation of volatile ice, that is, normal cometary activity. The activity implies that C/2014 S3 has retained a tiny fraction of the water that is expected to be present at its formation distance in the inner solar system. We may be looking at fresh inner solar system Earth-forming material that was ejected from the inner solar system and preserved for billions of years in the Oort cloud. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2016-04-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4928888/ /pubmed/27386512 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600038 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Meech, Karen J.
Yang, Bin
Kleyna, Jan
Hainaut, Olivier R.
Berdyugina, Svetlana
Keane, Jacqueline V.
Micheli, Marco
Morbidelli, Alessandro
Wainscoat, Richard J.
Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud
title Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud
title_full Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud
title_fullStr Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud
title_full_unstemmed Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud
title_short Inner solar system material discovered in the Oort cloud
title_sort inner solar system material discovered in the oort cloud
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4928888/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27386512
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1600038
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