Evidence for a Collisional Mechanism Affecting Kuiper Belt Object Colors

Abstract

The Kuiper Belt (KB) region of the solar system, stretching from 30 to at least 50 AU, contains Pluto-Charon, some ~105 Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) larger than 100 km in diameter, and myriad smaller bodies produced by collisions among KBOs (Farinella, Davis, & Stern 2000). The most notable physical attribute of the KBOs discovered to date is their reflectance color diversity, ranging from gray (i.e., neutral) to very red (Tegler & Romanishin 2000). We report here evidence for a statistical correlation between the colors of KBOs and the mean random impact speed that these objects experience, lending evidence to suggestions some years ago by modelers (Jewitt & Luu 1996) that a competition between collisional resurfacing and radiation reddening may contribute to the color diversity of KBOs.