CHEM 222 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Enstatite, Goldschmidt Classification, Kuiper Belt

• School: McGill University
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHEM 222
• Professor: Karine Auclair

Document Summary

A belt of 6000-10000 asteroids mostly between mars and jupiter. Kuiper belt 200 million comets spreading from pluto to 20x sun"s distance. Most comets come from the kuiper belt, and sometimes from the oort cloud. Comets enter the inner solar system in elliptical (almost parabolic) orbits. Halley"s comet trapped within the solar system. Aphelion (farthest distance from sun) as far as pluto. Perihelion (closest distance to sun) as close as venus. Most are gathered in the orbital ring beyond mars. Biggest asteroid = ceres, then pallas, juno, vesta, eugenia, siwa, kleopatra. A large asteroid (10km diameter?) struck earth at chicxulub, mexico. Solar insolation was blocked earth became very cold. When the dust clouds settled, co2 from vapourized rocks remained and the greenhouse shielding heated up the earth to very high temperatures. Another such event occurred about 35 million years ago.