In the early stages of our solar system there was loads of "stuff" more or less all over the place. Or earth grew because its gravity sucked in all the other stuff in the earths orbit.
So why has the Kuiper belt stayed as a load of asteroids? Why don't they attract each other and then start combining, getting heavier and attracting more and on and on until you get one nice big lump of rock?
2006-08-27 05:45:14 · 3 answers · asked by anthonypaullloyd 5 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Essentially there are not frequent enough encounters between bodies. People have these Star Wars inspired images of the asteroid belt, and probably the Kuiper belt. These are actually VERY empty zones.
The Kuiper belt is very thin. Its total mass is estimated at about the mass of the Earth. Now scatter that in a disk a milllion times larger than the enclosed area of the earth's orbit, (40-1000 AU; remember in a scale model solar system with the earth a ten meters from the sun, the earth is less than a mm across, the Kuiper belt occupies an area 400m to 10 km away from the sun in this hypothetical model) and it is not difficult to see why it hasn't all stuck together. In the scale model, you have taken the material in a large grain of sand and spread it in a circle about 12 miles in diameter! Encounter times between the larger particles in this system are of order once every billion years or so.
2006-08-27 07:06:14 · answer #1 · answered by Mr. Quark 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This is probably because of the lack of mass. Every object with mass has gravity. If you have multiple objects with equal mass or close to equal mass, then they all have the same amount of gravity. This means that there is balance or equilibrium within the belt. As long as there is this balance, then the rocks won't come together.
2006-08-27 07:05:15 · answer #2 · answered by frisbee72001 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Thats probably whats happening right now,but the process is to slow to observe.
2006-08-27 06:13:49 · answer #3 · answered by That one guy 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋