Asteroid Belt mass depletion

Planets, satellites, and small bodies provide a wide range of dynamical and chemical constraints on the building of the Solar System from planetesimals. In addition to the primary parameters of planets, the planet mass and semi-major axis distributions, the relative masses of the cores (exceptionally large for Mercury and low for the Moon) provide further constraints. In addition, the Asteroid Belt seems to be depleted in mass by three to four orders of magnitude and its medium- to small-sized... 

Safronov (1979) suggested that Mars- to Earth-mass planetary embryos left over from the accretion process could have caused the excitation and depletion of the Asteroid Belt. In this model, these embryos were scattered inwards by Jupiter onto orbits that traveled through the Asteroid Belt. Petit et al. (1999) modeled this scenario in detail and showed that it cannot fully explain the observed mass depletion and dynamical excitation of the Asteroid Belt, especially the orbital inclinations. 

Bottke et al (2005a,b) found that the current asteroid size distribution arose early in its history, when the total mass and collision rate were much higher than today. Once the Asteroid Belt was dynamically depleted and reached roughly its current mass (via the processes described above), there was little further evolution of the size distribution, and hence it has been referred to as a fossil size distribution. Collisions still occur, albeit at a reduced rate, and large collisions lead to the formation of asteroid families, which are groups of asteroids that are clustered in orbital-element (a, e, i) space. Numerous asteroid families can be seen in Fig. 10.6. 

Planetary-mass bodies probably formed in the Asteroid Belt and were responsible for its dynamical excitation, radial mixing, and mass depletion. The orbits of these bodies became unstable once Jupiter and Saturn formed. These objects and most remaining planetesimals fell into the Sun or were ejected from the Solar System. The Asteroid Belt may have been further depleted when the giant planets passed through a resonance before reaching their current orbits. The Asteroid Belt has lost relatively little mass due to collisional erosion, and most asteroids >100 km in diameter are probably primordial. 

The major planets are grouped small volatile-poor planets lie close to the Sun, with large volatile-rich planets further out. The main asteroid belt (2-4 AU from the Sun) is substantially depleted in mass with respect to other regions. 

The primary feature of the main asteroid belt is its great depletion in mass relative to other regions of the planetary system. The present mass of the main belt is 5 X 10 m , which represents 0.1 -0.01 % of the solid mass that existed at the time planetesimals were forming. There are several ways the main asteroid belt could have lost most of its primordial mass. Substantial loss by collisional erosion appears to be mled out by the preservation of asteroid Vesta s basaltic cmst, which formed in the first few million years of the solar system (Davis et al., 1994). More plausible models are based on the existence of orbital resonances associated with the giant planets. 

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