University of Arizona, Tucson | 2019 Oct 23
Researchers have discovered a region just beyond Jupiter that acts as a "comet gateway," funneling icy bodies from deep space into the inner solar system, where they can become regular visitors of Earth's neighborhood.
Comets are known to have a temper. As they swoop in from the outer edges of our solar system, these icy bodies begin spewing gas and dust as they venture closer to the sun. Their luminous outbursts can result in spectacular sights that grace the night sky for days, weeks or even months.
But comets aren't born that way, and their pathway from their original formation location toward the inner solar system has been debated for a long time. Comets are of great interest to planetary scientists because they are likely to be the most pristine remnants of material left over from the birth of our solar system.
... a team of researchers ... report the discovery of an orbital region just beyond Jupiter that acts as a "comet gateway." This pathway funnels icy bodies called centaurs from the region of the giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – into the inner solar system, where they can become regular visitors of Earth's neighborhood, cosmically speaking.
Roughly shaped like an imaginary donut encircling the area, the gateway was uncovered as part of a simulation of centaurs, small icy bodies traveling on chaotic orbits between Jupiter and Neptune. ...
29P/Schwassmann–Wachmann 1, A Centaur in the Gateway to the Jupiter-family Comets ~ Gal Sarid et al
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 883(1):L25 (2019 Sep 20) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab3fb3
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1908.04185 > 12 Aug 2019 (v1), 12 Sep 2019 (v2)