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Beginning with small icy bodies at the periphery of the solar system, comets according to new research, they turn into spectacular trails of light as they pass through a "gate" near Jupiter.
This gateway is a region of space where objects called centaurs, small icy bodies in orbit between Jupiter and Neptune, begin to approach the sun. In doing so, they warm up and become "active", releasing mainly a halo of dusty gas – which makes these small bodies, technically, comets. "We realized that there was a central point in the orbital space where small bodies were changing their orbit, which we dubbed" the gateway, "said lead author Gal Sarid. , a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida.
The gateway area is like a donut that envelops the inner solar system, containing many possible orbits in its thick ring. Sarid and his team first proposed the gateway idea after studying a particular centaur named 29P / Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 or SWI. Although technically a centaur, SWI is very active, releasing gas regularly like a comet, Sarid explained.
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The researchers then modeled other small icy bodies from the suburbs of the solar system, and found that many of them were following the same path as SWI – leaving beyond Neptune, leading to an erratic orbit between Jupiter and Neptune, then leading to this gateway region. In fact, scientists have discovered that one in five centaurs analyzed was in a SW1-like orbit at some point.
By doing this same journey, the centaurs give birth to most comets of the Jupiter family, a group of comets called "short-period comets," that is, those that revolve around the sun in less than 200 years old. Their models indicate that centaurs do not stay long in the gateway area; most become comets of the Jupiter family in a few thousand years and pass into the internal solar system. This is a short time since comets can live millions if not billions of years.
But it's not a one-way trip. Researchers' models show that comets from the Jupiter family sometimes return to the gateway area, moving away from the sun. The data showed that 70% of comets in the Jupiter family spend time in the gateway area, whether they are moving towards the inner solar system or the periphery. "They can go back and forth like a revolving door," said Sarid.
"The gateway model is not meant to solve all the possible issues," said Sarid. "The idea was to identify this region where this transition occurred." This model could possibly tell us a little more about the first solar system, he added. "When the solar system was formed very early, it was built from smaller pieces to larger pieces," as Ikea furniture is built, he said. These comets, centaurs and other small objects are like the nuts and bolts of a cabinet.
The results were first published in the pre-print journal arXiv August 12 and will be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters this week.
Originally published on Science live.
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