Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T09:52:34.450Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Dynamics of Gravitating Systems of Colliding Particles in Planetary Discs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

André Brahic*
Affiliation:
Observatoire de Paris, 92190 Meudon et Université Paris VII, 75005 Paris France

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

During this symposium on the dynamics of the solar system, we have mainly studied the movements of the bodies of the solar system submitted to gravitational perturbations. The next step is to take into account the physical collisions. Indeed, there can be little doubt that collisions between “macroscopic bodies” are of frequent occurence in the Universe. All kinds of quite different objects undergo such collisions: these may range from large interstellar clouds to small solid bodies in the solar system. Collisions have surely played an important role in the formation of planets and satellites and continue to play a central role in the behaviour of the planetary discs. For example for Saturn's rings, one can see intuitively that until the optical depth drops much below unity, the rings are still evolving. Each orbiting particle can be taken as occupying a kind of torus, and collisions will continue until there is only one particle in each such “orbital tube”; this corresponds to a very small optical depth.

Type
Part IV: Satellites and Rings
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1979 

References

Brahic, A.: 1977a, Astron. Astrophys. 54, pp. 895907.Google Scholar
Brahic, A.: 1977b, Astron. Astrophys. 59, pp. 17.Google Scholar
Hénon, M.: 1975, private communication.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, H.: 1947, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 107, pp. 263268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poincaré, H.: 1911, Leçons sur les hypothèses cosmogoniques , Hermann, Paris, pp. 8689.Google Scholar