Tidal Disruption of Rubble Piles

If you read the introductory paragraph from my page on rubble pile collisions, you'll know that there is reason to believe small bodies in the Solar System may be very fragile. The most spectacular example is the tidal breakup of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. In collaboration with Bill Bottke and Stan Love, we have taken this idea one step further and asked what would happen if a fragile asteroid flew too close past the Earth. We found that it is possible to completely disrupt a rubble-pile asteroid if is passes by close enough and slow enough. In fact, tidal disruption and distortion of rubble piles could help explain the presence of crater chains on our Moon, the frequency of doublet craters on the terrestrial planets, and the strange shapes and spins of some Near-Earth Asteroids. For more information, check out the publication links below and also pay a visit to Bill Bottke's home page!

Also check out my D/SL9 tidal disruption movies!

12/1/05: A new paper and review chapter related to formation of binary minor planets by tidal disruption can be found on my CV page.

• 1620 Geographos and 433 Eros: Shaped by Planetary Tides?
  W. F. Bottke, Jr., D. C. Richardson, P. Michel, S. G. Love, AJ 117:1921, 1999
• Tidal Distortion and Disruption of Earth-crossing Asteroids
  D. C. Richardson, W. F. Bottke, Jr., S. G. Love, Icarus 134:47, 1998
• Production of Tunguska-sized Bodies by Earth's Tidal Forces
  W. F. Bottke, Jr., D. C. Richardson, S. G. Love, P&SS 46:311, 1998
  [submitted version: compressed PostScript]
• NOTE: Can Tidal Disruption of Asteroids Make Crater Chains on the Earth and Moon?
  W. F. Bottke, Jr., D. C. Richardson, S. G. Love, Icarus 126:470, 1997

Last modified: Dec 1, 2005