{"id":156801,"date":"2023-02-02T01:26:50","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T07:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/numerical-simulations-of-planetesimal-formation-reproduce-key-properties-of-asteroids-comets"},"modified":"2023-02-02T01:26:50","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T07:26:50","slug":"numerical-simulations-of-planetesimal-formation-reproduce-key-properties-of-asteroids-comets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/numerical-simulations-of-planetesimal-formation-reproduce-key-properties-of-asteroids-comets","title":{"rendered":"Numerical simulations of planetesimal formation reproduce key properties of asteroids, comets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/numerical-simulations-of-planetesimal-formation-reproduce-key-properties-of-asteroids-comets2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>With simulations that go into finer details than ever before, Brooke Polak of the University of Heidelberg and Hubert Klahr at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) have modeled a key phase in the formation of planets in our solar system: the way that centimeter-size pebbles aggregate into so-called planetesimals tens to hundreds kilometers in size. The simulation reproduces the initial size distribution of planetesimals, which can be checked against observations of present-day asteroids. It also predicts the prevalence of close binary planetesimals in our solar system.<\/p>\n<p>In a new study published on <i>arXiv<\/i> and accepted for publication in <i>The Astrophysical Journal<\/i>, astrophysicists Brooke Polak from the University of Heidelberg and Hubert Klahr from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy used simulations to derive key properties of so-called planetesimals\u2014the intermediate-size bodies from which planets formed in our solar system roughly 4.5 billion years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Using an innovative method for simulating planetesimal formation, the two researchers were able to predict the initial size distribution of planetesimals in our solar system: how many are likely to have formed in the different \u201csize brackets\u201d between roughly 10 km and 200 km.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With simulations that go into finer details than ever before, Brooke Polak of the University of Heidelberg and Hubert Klahr at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) have modeled a key phase in the formation of planets in our solar system: the way that centimeter-size pebbles aggregate into so-called planetesimals tens to hundreds kilometers [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}