Formation of cometary nuclei during low-velocity collisions of planetesimals

Abstract

An investigation of the properties of the 67P/CG nucleus shows convincingly that some of the cometary nuclei resulted from low-velocity collisions of planetesimals. The hypothesis about the origination of a cometary nucleus from colliding bodies has long been known, but it is comet 67P/CG that has imparted topicality to it. In this paper we briefly formulate the combining or disruption criteria and show that in several cases the geometry of the cometary nucleus retains some information about the collision process and allows the impactor momentum to be found.