The depletion of the asteroid belt and the impact history of the Earth

Abstract

We have evaluated the rate at which the asteroid belt is losing material, and how it splits between macroscopic bodies and meteoritic dust. The mass loss process is due to the injection of asteroid fragments into unstable dynamical regions, associated to mean-motion resonances with Jupiter, Saturn and Mars or secular resonances, from where they are scattered either to the region of the terrestrial planets or to the vicinity of Jupiter's orbit. Asteroid fragments that do not escape from the belt are ground down by mutual collisions to meteoritic dust. Under the assumption that 25\% of the zodiacal dust mass is of asteroidal origin, we find that the asteroid belt is currently losing a fraction of about $\mu_o \simeq 8.8 \times 10^{-5}$ Ma$^{-1}$ of its collisionally-active mass (without the primordial objects Ceres, Vesta and Pallas), about 20\% as macroscopic bodies, and 80\% as dust particles that feed the zodiacal dust cloud. Extrapolation of the current mass loss rate to the past suggests only a moderate increase of the asteroid belt mass and the mass loss rate around 3.0 - 3.5 Ga ago (by about 50\% and a factor of two respectively). Yet, should the computed $\mu_o$ be somewhat underestimated owing to the different uncertainties associated to its computation, the extrapolation to the past would lead to quite different results. For instance, a moderate increase in the computed $\mu_o$, say by a factor of three, would lead to an exponential increase of the asteroid mass and mass loss rate about 3.5 Ga ago. A greater asteroid mass loss rate in the past should be correlated with a more intense impact rate of the Earth, Moon and the other terrestrial planets, which is indeed what suggests the geologic record (Hartmann 2007).