2003/03/05 by Yoko Funato, Funato, Yoko, Junichiro Makino +7
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism Studies #Planetary Science and Exploration #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0303113
11 pages, 3 Figures
openalex publication_date 2003/03/05 · arxiv created 2003/03/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent observations (Burnes et al 2002,Veillet et al 2002, Margot et al 2002a) have revealed an unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that populate the Kuiper Belt. The TNO binaries are strikingly different from asteroid binaries in four respects (Veillet et al 2002): their frequency is an order of magnitude larger, the mass ratio of their components is closer to unity, and their orbits are wider and highly eccentric. Two explanations have been proposed for their formation, one assuming large numbers of massive bodies (Weidenschilling 2002), and one assuming large numbers of light bodies (Goldreich et al 2002). We argue that both assumptions are unwarranted, and we show how TNO binaries can be produced from a modest number of intermediate-mass bodies of the type predicted by the gravitational instability theory for the formation of planetesimals (Goldreich and Ward 1973). We start with a TNO binary population similar to the asteroid binary population, but subsequently modified by three-body exchange reactions, a process that is far more efficient in the Kuiper belt, because of the much smaller tidal perturbations by the Sun. Our mechanism can naturally account for all four characteristics that distinguish TNO binaries from main-belt asteroid binaries.