Efficient disruption of small asteroids by Earth's atmosphere

P. A. Bland () and N. A. Artemieva
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P. A. Bland: Imperial College London
N. A. Artemieva: Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres, Russian Academy of Sciences

Nature, 2003, vol. 424, issue 6946, 288-291

Abstract: Abstract Accurate modelling of the interaction between the atmosphere and an incoming bolide is a complex task, but crucial to determining the fraction of small asteroids that actually hit the Earth's surface. Most semi-analytical approaches have simplified the problem by considering the impactor as a strengthless liquid-like object (‘pancake’ models1,2), but recently a more realistic model has been developed that calculates motion, aerodynamic loading and ablation for each separate particle or fragment in a disrupted impactor3,4. Here we report the results of a large number of simulations in which we use both models to develop a statistical picture of atmosphere–bolide interaction for iron and stony objects with initial diameters up to ∼1 km. We show that the separated-fragments model predicts the total atmospheric disruption of much larger stony bodies than previously thought. In addition, our data set of >1,000 simulated impacts, combined with the known pre-atmospheric flux of asteroids with diameters less than 1 km5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, elucidates the flux of small bolides at the Earth's surface. We estimate that bodies >220 m in diameter will impact every 170,000 years.

Date: 2003
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DOI: 10.1038/nature01757

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