A theory of sequential fragmentation and its astronomical applications

A theory of sequential fragmentation is presented that describes a cascade of fragmentation and refragmentation,i.e., continued comminution. It is shown that the theory reproduces one of the two major empirical descriptors that have traditionally been used to describe the mass distributions from fragmentation experiments. Additional experimental evidence is presented to further validate the theory, and includes explosive aerosolization, grinding in a ball mill, and simulated volcanic action. Also presented are some astronomical applications of the theory including infalling extraterrestrial material, siderophile concentrations in black magnetic spherules of possible meteoritic origin, the asteroids, the distribution of galactic masses, and the initial mass function of stars

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