Taurid Complex Smoking Gun: Detection of Cometary Activity

TL;DR

This study uses the Secular Light Curve formalism to identify active members of the Taurid Complex, supporting the hypothesis that a large progenitor comet fragmented during the Paleolithic, creating the current diverse asteroid and meteoroid population.

Contribution

It provides the first catalog of 88 probable Taurid Complex members and demonstrates a high percentage of cometary activity among them, linking them to a historic fragmentation event.

Findings

67% of catalogued members show cometary activity

Active members include (2212) Hephaistos and 169P/NEAT

The complex includes meteoroids and potential Earth-impacting objects

Abstract

Using the Secular Light Curve (SLC) formalism (Ferr\'in, 2010), we have catalogued 88 probable members of the Taurid Complex (TC). 51 of them have useful SLCs and 34 of these (67%) exhibit cometary activity. This high percentage of active asteroids gives support to the hypothesis of a catastrophe that took place during the Upper Paleolithic (Clube and Napier, 1984), when a large short-period comet, arriving in the inner Solar System from the Kuiper Belt, experienced, starting from 20 thousand years ago, a series of fragmentations that produced the present 2P/Encke comet, together with a large number of other members of the TC. The fragmentation of the progenitor body was facilitated by its heterogeneous structure (very similar to a rubble pile) and this also explains the current coexistence in the complex of fragments of different composition and origin. We have found that (2212) Hephaistos and 169P/NEAT are active and members of the TC with their own sub-group. Other components of the complex are groups of meteoroids, that often give rise to meteor showers when they enter the terrestrial atmosphere, and very probably also the two small asteroids that in 1908 and 2013 exploded in the terrestrial atmosphere over Tunguska and Chelyabinsk, respectively. What we see today of the TC are the remnants of a very varied and numerous complex of objects, characterized by an intense past of collisions with the Earth which may continue to represent a danger for our planet.