The Relationship between Centaurs and Jupiter Family Comets with Implications for K-Pg-type Impacts

TL;DR

This study uses extensive numerical simulations to elucidate how Centaurs transform into Jupiter Family Comets, highlighting their role as a persistent impact threat to terrestrial planets.

Contribution

It provides a detailed dynamical mechanism for Centaur to JFC conversion based on a large dataset of simulated interactions, advancing understanding of small body evolution.

Findings

Centaurs frequently become JFCs through close planetary interactions.

The process is supported by over 2.6 million simulated encounters.

JFCs pose a continuous impact threat to inner Solar System planets.

Abstract

Centaurs--icy bodies orbiting beyond Jupiter and interior to Neptune--are believed to be dynamically related to Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs), which have aphelia near Jupiter's orbit and perihelia in the inner Solar System. Previous dynamical simulations have recreated the Centaur/JFC conversion, but the mechanism behind that process remains poorly described. We have performed a numerical simulation of Centaur analogues that recreates this process, generating a dataset detailing over 2.6 million close planet/planetesimal interactions. We explore scenarios stored within that database and, from those, describe the mechanism by which Centaur objects are converted into JFCs. Because many JFCs have perihelia in the terrestrial planet region, and since Centaurs are constantly resupplied from the Scattered Disk and other reservoirs, the JFCs are an ever-present impact threat.