Migration of Comets to the Terrestrial Planets

Abstract

We studied the orbital evolution of Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), Halley-type comets (HTCs), and long-period comets, and probabilities of their collisions with planets. In our runs the probability of a collision of one object with the Earth could be greater than the sum of probabilities for thousands of other objects. Even without a contribution of such a few bodies, the probability of a collision of a former JFC with the Earth was greater than 4$\cdot10^{-6}$. This probability is enough for delivery of all the water to Earth's oceans during formation of the giant planets. The ratios of probabilities of collisions of JFCs and HTCs with Venus and Mars to the mass of a planet usually were not smaller than that for Earth. Among 30,000 considered objects with initial orbits close to those of JFCs, a few objects got Earth-crossing orbits with semi-major axes $a$$<$2 AU and aphelion distances $Q$$<$4.2 AU, or even got inner-Earth ($Q$$<$0.983 AU), Aten, or typical asteroidal orbits, and moved in such orbits for more than 1 Myr (up to tens or even hundreds of Myrs). From a dynamical point of view, the fraction of extinct comets among near-Earth objects can exceed several tens of percent, but, probably, many extinct comets disintegrated into mini-comets and dust during a smaller part of their dynamical lifetimes if these lifetimes were large.