The Ballistic Spreading of Debris Clouds over a Planetary Ring
Abstract
I develop a theoretical model for the evolution of a debris cloud, spreading from the location of the impact. For simplicity the details of the disruption are not addressed. I start with an isotropic model, assuming that a 30 km/s hypervelocity projectile, perhaps centimeter to decimeter sized, hits and destroys a ring particle (perhaps meter to tens of meters in size), leading to a cloud of debris spreading uniformly from the point of impact, with power law distributed speeds of ejection. This conceptually simple model allows us to study basic properties of the evolution of the cloud. Effects of anisotropy, arising from the direction of the projectile and the effect of momentum conservation, can be incorporated without principal difficulty in an improved model.
- Publication:
-
EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011
- Pub Date:
- October 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011epsc.conf.1782S