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The Densities and Rotation of Kuiper Belt Objects

Pedro Lacerda
Queen's University, Belfast

My talk will consist of two parts. In the first part I will present
results from hydrodynamical simulations of the accretion of ~100 km
planetesimals directly from pebble-sized particles, in the presence of
gas. The pebbles form a prograde accretion disk that feeds the central
object. The disk's angular momentum is transferred to the growing
protoplanet which acquires fast prograde rotation, close to the
break-up rate. This model predicts that the largest Kuiper belt
objects should rotate primarily in the prograde direction. In the
second part of the talk I will discuss the compositional variety of
Kuiper belt objects as inferred from the spread in their bulk
densities.
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