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Hypervolatile retention within small Kuiper Belt Objects
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DOI：10.1016/j.icarus.2026.117290.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Small, undifferentiated objects in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are some of the solar system's most primitive bodies; their structures and compositions may retain unique information about processes that occurred during the period of planetesimal formation. These objects are extremely difficult to observe in-situ, but gravitational perturbations result in a small subset entering the inner solar system as comets. Before this population can be reliably used to gain insight into the process of planetesimal formation, however, the type and degree of alteration experienced by these objects between formation and present-day observation must be understood. Previous research suggested that KBOs should rapidly lose their most volatile materials, which is seemingly at odds with observations of the highly volatile CO outgassing from dynamically new comets. This apparent discrepancy necessitates a re-examination of the long-term evolution of these bodies. We have therefore developed a new thermophysical evolution model for small, porous, and volatile-rich objects. We explore a wide range of potential interior structures and compositions, in accordance with the large uncertainties suggested by experiments and observations. We find that, although most of our simulated objects lost their CO on short (<< 1 Gyr) timescales, some late-accreting (>3 Myrs after CAI formation) objects retained substantial CO inventories until the present day. These results suggest that, while hypervolatile outgassing from comets may in most cases result from secondary processes or trapping within more refractory ices, modern hypervolatile gas fluxes from some objects may provide insight into conditions in the earliest era of our solar system.
Keywords:
Kuiper Belt
Trans-Neptunian objects
Thermal histories
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