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Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 021103 (2004) [4 pages]

Growth and Form of Planetary Seedlings: Results from a Sounding Rocket Microgravity Aggregation Experiment

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Maya Krause
Astrophysikalisches Institut und Universitätssternwarte, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Schillergässchen 2, 07745 Jena, Germany

Jürgen Blum*
Institut für Geophysik und Extraterrestrische Physik, Technische Universität zu Braunschweig, Mendelssohnstrasse 3, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany

Received 6 February 2004; published 9 July 2004

See accompanying Physics Focus

In a second microgravity experiment on the formation of dust agglomerates by Brownian motion-induced collisions we find that the agglomerates have fractal dimensions as low as 1.4. Because of much better data, we are now able to derive the diffusion constant of the agglomerates as a function of mass, to show that a power law with an exponent of 1.7 describes the temporal evolution of the mean agglomerate mass very well and to prove that the collision cross section is proportional to the geometrical cross section. In addition to that we derived the universal mass-distribution function of the agglomerates.

© 2004 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.021103
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.021103
PACS:
96.35.Cp, 45.70.–n, 61.43.Hv, 81.10.Mx

*To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Email address: j.blum@tu-bs.de