The Complex History of Trojan Asteroids
Joshua P. Emery, Francesco Marzari, Alessandro Morbidelli, Linda M., French, Tommy Grav

TL;DR
Trojan asteroids offer insights into Solar System history, with recent advances revealing their composition, origin, and evolution, suggesting they formed in the proto-Kuiper Belt and were captured by planetary resonances.
Contribution
This paper reviews recent discoveries about Trojan asteroids, proposing a new origin scenario and highlighting the need for future spacecraft missions and laboratory studies.
Findings
Detection of silicate compositions similar to comets
Color bimodality indicating distinct groups
Support for formation in the proto-Kuiper Belt
Abstract
The Trojan asteroids provide a unique perspective on the history of Solar System. As a large population of small bodies, they record important gravitational interactions and dynamical evolution of the Solar System. In the past decade, significant advances have been made in understanding physical properties, and there has been a revolution in thinking about the origin of Trojans. The ice and organics generally presumed to be a significant part of Trojan compositions have yet to be detected directly, though low density of the binary system Patroclus (and possibly low density of the binary/moonlet system Hektor) is consistent with an interior ice component. By contrast, fine-grained silicates that appear to be similar to cometary silicates in composition have been detected, and a color bimodality may indicate distinct compositional groups among the Trojans. Whereas Trojans had…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
