Abstract Details
| Name: Ishan Sharma Affiliation: IIT, Kanpur Conference ID: ASI2019_666 Title : Mechanics of granular minor planets: Getting to know our small neighbors. Authors and Co-Authors : Ishan Sharma, IIT, Kanpur Abstract Type : Invited Abstract Category : Sun and the Solar System Abstract : Earths immediate neighbourhood in space offers a scientifically challenging, but economically attractive resource opportunity in the form of minor planets. A minor planet is a Solar System object that is not a planet. Thus, moons, asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) fall in this category. Study of these objects has technological importance: e.g. space mission planning, locating and harvesting of natural resources is crucial for disaster management: e.g. impact of Earth-crossing asteroids prompts challenging scientific questions: e.g. understanding Solar System’s formation and cometary processes, texturing on asteroids. and surface grain flow. A study of these objects requires a coming together of sophisticated continuum mechanics, massive parallelized simulations, observational astronomy, and, novel lab-space- based experiments. Several of these objects, most noticeably near-Earth asteroids and the small moons of the giant planets, are suspected to be granular aggregates — or rubble-piles — held together primarily by self-gravity. This suspicion is based on many observational indicators. These objects are meters to several kilometers in size, and it is remarkable that their very low self-gravity can keep them together, e.g. the asteroid Itokawa’s surface gravity is a mere 0.1 mm/s 2. In this talk, I will summarize progress made over the past decade in understanding the mechanics of granular minor planets. I will conclude with a list of open questions that have become ever more relevant today. |