Collège De France (général)

Alessandro MorbidelliChaire Chaire Formation planétaire : de la Terre aux exoplanètesCollège de FranceAnnée 2025-2026David NesvornýConférence - David Nesvorný : Collisional Families in the Asteroid Belt and Sources of MeteoritesDavid NesvornýSouthwest Research Institute, USARésuméMain-belt asteroids originally formed in a dynamically quiet disk, but their orbits were later stirred by Jupiter's gravity, leading to high-speed collisions. Over the age of the Solar System, dozens of large asteroids have been disrupted by such impacts, producing groups of fragments known as asteroid families. Here we explain how asteroid families are identified, review the current inventory, and discuss how they provide insight into the collisional and dynamical evolution of the asteroid belt. Currently, about 360 asteroid families have been cataloged, including ~100 that formed within the past 10 million years. Studies of these families shed light on the physics of large-scale collisions - a key process in the formation of Earth