Kuiper Belt Collision Found; Possible Comet Source

siglercm writes "Astronomers have detected the remnants of an ancient collision in the Kuiper Belt, the region of bodies found outside of our solar system. The massive impact between a nearly Pluto-sized body and one half as large created a 'collisional family' of objects; this is the first such family identified in the Kuiper Belt. The largest body produced may cross Neptune's orbit in the distant future, but it's possible that smaller objects created by the smash-up have already fallen into the inner solar system as comets."

Comments

Kuiper Crash

[Stanistani]

How does the "dirty snowball" composition of comets fit into this theory?
Wouldn't the result resemble asteroids rather than comets?

Re:Kuiper Crash

[siglercm]

I was really dense in reading your post at first. I think I understand your question now, but please let me know if I've got it wrong.

This is a possible source of some (few) comets (if I understand correctly). I don't believe there's any assertion that all comets come from this collision. The main object is mostly rocky, but they say the trailing small ones are icy. It's possible that some of these smaller bodies may have been perturbed from their orbits and fallen into the inner solar system as comets.

What about Pluto?

[benhocking]

What about Pluto, Charon, Hydra, and Nix? Couldn't they be such a family?

Hill sphere comes close to what you want

[benhocking]

If you consider the nearest stars and/or the galaxy as a whole, you could calculate the Hill sphere for the Sun. I do believe that, in purely technical terms, it's large.

Try 800

[benhocking]

At least according to Wikipedia! (I had no idea we were up that high, either.)

shaped like a M&M

[daniel23]

I spent more than an hour reading about this and other finds on the homepage of one of the team who found that,
M.E.Brown

The Link has a animated model of the thing and a schematic of its structure that looks like candy..