Kuiper Belt Model - Details
- Our simulations are idealized:
- Uranus and Neptune are initially on eccentric orbits.
- They migrate and their eccentricities slowly damp with time.
- A cold population of test particles representing a cold outer disk.
- A scattered disk representing objects that formed closer in.
- We match the semi-major axes - eccentricity distribution fairly well.
- We match the inclination distribution fairly well.
- We also get a crude correlations between formation location and final inclination.
- This can explain the observed correlation between inclination and physical parameters:
- Size (Levison & Stern)
- Colors (Trujillo & Brown; Tegler & Romanishin)
