Hypothetical question about objects in the asteroid belt

"Arie Kazachin" om wrote
in message ...

Suppose that all (most) of the objects in the asteroid belt had been
brought
together till they're touching one another and then left alone.
Will their combined gravity hold them together or the Jupiter's
tidal forces will spread them again to form a belt?

Is there a "critical mass" above which they'll remain together and below
which they'll not?

I'd expect they'd stay stuck together. Jupiter's influence kept tiny
fragments from combining into a planet, rather than disrupting an existing
planet, which is what you'd practically have by that point.

Still, it'd be a pretty dinky planet; smaller than our moon.

There are much better uses for the belt than making another worthless
planet...

--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We should ask, critically and with appeal to the numbers, whether the
best site for a growing advancing industrial society is Earth, the
Moon, Mars, some other planet, or somewhere else entirely.
Surprisingly, the answer will be inescapable - the best site is
"somewhere else entirely."

Gerard O'Neill - "The High Frontier"