Several technologies have been proposed for deflecting a hazardous Solar System object on a trajectory that would otherwise impact the Earth. The effectiveness of each technology depends on several ...characteristics of the given object, including its orbit and size. The distribution of these parameters in the likely population of Earth-impacting objects can thus determine which of the technologies are most likely to be useful in preventing a collision with the Earth. None of the proposed deflection technologies has been developed and fully tested in space. Developing every proposed technology is currently prohibitively expensive, so determining now which technologies are most likely to be effective would allow us to prioritize a subset of proposed deflection technologies for funding and development. We present a new model, the Deflector Selector, that takes as its input the characteristics of a hazardous object or population of such objects and predicts which technology would be able to perform a successful deflection. The model consists of a machine-learning algorithm trained on data produced by N-body integrations simulating the deflections. We describe the model and present the results of tests of the effectiveness of nuclear explosives, kinetic impactors, and gravity tractors on three simulated populations of hazardous objects.
•Discovery time significantly constrains the probability of deflection success.•Object semi-major axis has the largest effect on the success of a deflection attempt.•Chance of success of a deflection technology varies with object population parameters.•Machine learning can accelerate predictions of deflection technology success.
Exocometary Gas in the HD 181327 Debris Ring Marino, S.; Matra, L.; Stark, C. ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
08/2016, Volume:
460, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
An increasing number of observations have shown that gaseous debris discs are not an exception. However, until now, we only knew of cases around A stars. Here we present the first detection of 12CO ...(2-1) disc emission around an F star, HD 181327, obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations at 1.3 mm. The continuum and CO emission are resolved into an axisymmetric disc with ring-like morphology. Using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method coupled with radiative transfer calculations, we study the dust and CO mass distribution. We find the dust is distributed in a ring with a radius of 86.0 +/- 0.4 au and a radial width of 23.2 +/- 1.0 au. At this frequency, the ring radius is smaller than in the optical, revealing grain size segregation expected due to radiation pressure. We also report on the detection of low-level continuum emission beyond the main ring out to approximately 200 au. We model the CO emission in the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium regime and we find that the CO is co-located with the dust, with a total CO gas mass ranging between 1.2 x 10(exp -6) solar mass and 2.9 x 10(exp -6) solar mass, depending on the gas kinetic temperature and collisional partners densities. The CO densities and location suggest a secondary origin, i.e. released from icy planetesimals in the ring. We derive a CO+CO2 cometary composition that is consistent with Solar system comets. Due to the low gas densities, it is unlikely that the gas is shaping the dust distribution.
ABSTRACT
Spatially resolved images of debris discs are necessary to determine disc morphological properties and the scattering phase function (SPF) thatantifies the brightness of scattered light as a ...function of phase angle. Current high-contrast imaging instruments have successfully resolved several dozens of debris discs around other stars, but few studies have investigated trends in the scattered-light, resolved population of debris discs in a uniform and consistent manner. We have combined Karhunen-Loeve Image Projection (KLIP) with radiative-transfer disc forward modelling in order to obtain the highest-quality image reductions and constrain disc morphological properties of eight debris discs imaged by the Gemini Planet Imager at H-band with a consistent and uniformly applied approach. In describing the scattering properties of our models, we assume a common SPF informed from solar system dust scattering measurements and apply it to all systems. We identify a diverse range of dust density properties among the sample, including critical radius, radial width, and vertical width. We also identify radially narrow and vertically extended discs that may have resulted from substellar companion perturbations, along with a tentative positive trend in disc eccentricity with relative disc width. We also find that using a common SPF can achieve reasonable model fits for discs that are axisymmetric and asymmetric when fitting models to each side of the disc independently, suggesting that scattering behaviour from debris discs may be similar to Solar system dust.
An increasing number of observations have shown that gaseous debris discs are not an exception. However, until now we only knew of cases around A stars. Here we present the first detection of 12CO ...(2-1) disc emission around an F star, HD 181327, obtained with ALMA observations at 1.3 mm. The continuum and CO emission are resolved into an axisymmetric disc with ring-like morphology. Using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method coupled with radiative transfer calculations we study the dust and CO mass distribution. We find the dust is distributed in a ring with a radius of 86.0 +- 0.4 AU and a radial width of 23.2 +- 1.0 AU. At this frequency the ring radius is smaller than in the optical, revealing grain size segregation expected due to radiation pressure. We also report on the detection of low level continuum emission beyond the main ring out to ~200 AU. We model the CO emission in the non-LTE regime and we find that the CO is co-located with the dust, with a total CO gas mass ranging between 1.2x10^-6 Mearth and 2.9x10^-6 Mearth, depending on the gas kinetic temperature and collisional partners densities. The CO densities and location suggest a secondary origin, i.e. released from icy planetesimals in the ring. We derive a CO+CO2 cometary composition that is consistent with Solar system comets. Due to the low gas densities it is unlikely that the gas is shaping the dust distribution.
Three LMW heparins (LMWH), one unfractionated heparin (UH), and international standards of LMWH and UH were compared in three chromogenic substrate (CS) assays and the 'Heptest' clotting assay. With ...a two-stage CS assay, linear standard curves were obtained in the 0.1-1.0 U/ml range, nearly coinciding for all preparations. With the one-stage CS assays, standard curves were curvilinear and similar for UH and the LMWH groups. In the Heptest assay, standard curves were linear for UH but not for LMWH. Mean recovery of LMWH, added to patients' plasma samples was 70-98% for the four assays. Variation between individual recoveries was much greater with Heptest (coefficient of variation (CV) 35-44%) than with one-stage CS assays (CV 14-21%) or two-stage CS assays (CV 7-8%). For monitoring LMW heparin therapy, CS assays seem preferable to Heptest. The two-stage CS assay had superior accuracy, but the one-stage CS assays were easier to perform.
An increasing number of observations have shown that gaseous debris discs are not an exception. However, until now, we only knew of cases around A stars. Here we present the first detection of ...(CO)-C-12 (2-1) disc emission around an F star, HD 181327, obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations at 1.3 mm. The continuum and CO emission are resolved into an axisymmetric disc with ring-like morphology. Using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method coupled with radiative transfer calculations, we study the dust and CO mass distribution. We find the dust is distributed in a ring with a radius of 86.0 +/- 0.4 au and a radial width of 23.2 +/- 1.0 au. At this frequency, the ring radius is smaller than in the optical, revealing grain size segregation expected due to radiation pressure. We also report on the detection of low-level continuum emission beyond the main ring out to similar to 200 au. We model the CO emission in the non-local thermodynamic equilibrium regime and we find that the CO is co-located with the dust, with a total CO gas mass ranging between 1.2 x 10(-6) M-aS center dot and 2.9 x 10(-6) M-aS center dot, depending on the gas kinetic temperature and collisional partners densities. The CO densities and location suggest a secondary origin, i.e. released from icy planetesimals in the ring. We derive a CO+CO2 cometary composition that is consistent with Solar system comets. Due to the low gas densities, it is unlikely that the gas is shaping the dust distribution.
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