Bibcode
Rickman, H.; Fernández, J. A.; Tancredi, G.; Licandro, J.
Referencia bibliográfica
In: Collisional processes in the solar system, ed. by: Mikhail Ya. Marov and Hans Rickman, Astrophysics and space science library, Volume 261, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 0-7923-6946-7, 2001, p. 131 - 142
Fecha de publicación:
0
2001
Número de citas
7
Número de citas referidas
6
Descripción
We use statistics on the nuclear magnitudes of Jupiter Family comets to
derive the number of km-sized members with perihelion distances less
than 2 AU. When coupled with impact rates per comet taken from Levison
et al. (2000), and with our estimate of the number of dormant comets in
similar orbits yielding a dormant/active ratio of about 2, we find a
terrestrial impact rate of about 1×10-6 per year. This
is already significant (~20 - 50%) compared with the total estimated
impact rate by km-sized bodies from cratering statistics, and we
estimate that further contributions by Halley-type and long-period
comets are also substantial. Thus, in broad agreement with a number of
earlier investigators, we find that comets yield a large, perhaps
dominant, contribution to km-sized terrestrial impactors.