On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 15:36:08 -0500, Pat Flannery wrote
(in article ):



Herb Schaltegger wrote:

Asymmetrical venting, I betcha. This on the heels of a report I saw
today that Ceres likely has large amounts of frozen volatiles,
including water. (Sorry no link).



I think I can figure out something that combines both your and OM's
concepts- if Santa is basically a big low-density chunk of dust and ice,
and it gets struck by something fairly small and dense moving at high
velocity (like a nickel-iron meteor) then the impactor could penetrate
its surface to a considerable depth and create a "hot spot" inside of
it, which would cause the ices to melt and vent out the hole the
impactor caused, spinning it up like a low-thrust rocket engine.

Pat

Could be - I didn't realize how far out "Santa" was when I first
posted. After I thought about it, I considered impact heating but
promptly forgot to post a note to that effect.


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