For a week, it was a truly stunning crumb of the solar system — until scientists realized it was just a dirty hunk of ice with an identity crisis.
The twisted tale revolves around a surprising, dusty tail spotted among a clump of distant space rocks. And it begins in Hawaii, with a program called the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS .
ATLAS is a serious project with its sights on more existential solar system mysteries than identity fraud. Every night, its two observatories perched on Hawaiian peaks survey the sky, watching for anything that moves against the background of stars. The goal is to spot any large space rocks that may collide with Earth as soon as possible, so humans have more time to try to fend off a possible apocalypse.
Many things are taking place:
Bennu and Ryugu may have come from the same asteroid collision
Approximately 600 million kilometers from Earth, fragments of rock are scattered in an orbit around the Sun, roughly between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. The asteroid belt contains millions of oddly shaped rocky bodies, and some of them make their way closer to Earth.
Asteroids Bennu and Ryugu are two such near-Earth asteroids, famous for their irregular spinning-top shape. And a new study suggests that they came from the same region of the asteroid belt as a result of a major collision, and may have even broken off from the same parent body.
Asteroid news: 'Dangerous asteroids' warning system makes groundbreaking discovery |
Subsequent observations in July revealed a faint trail of gas or dust behind the asteroid, giving it the appearance of a comet.
As comets race around the Sun, they melt and the frozen chunks of ice and rock leave behind distinct tails of dust and glowing plasma.
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Astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons from Queen's University Belfast said: "We have believed for decades that Trojan asteroids should have large amounts of ice beneath their surfaces, but never had any evidence until now.
Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs created a network of hot waterways | Daily Mail Online
A team of researchers found that the impact of the city-sized space rock produced a network of warm waterways under the crater, which is in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico .
Hydrothermal minerals (analcime and dachiardite) inside a tiny cavity within impact rocks that fill the Chicxulub crater. Authors say this is a sign of the heated waterways
The study was carried out by an international team from the Universities Space Research Association, Imperial College London and the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
While you're here, how about this:
NASA's OSIRIS-REx Ready for Touchdown on Asteroid Bennu | NASA
Asteroids Ryugu and Bennu were formed by the destruction of a large asteroid
The simulations also show that Bennu and Ryugu may have formed from the disruption of the same parent asteroid even though their levels of hydration are different. The scientists conclude that the overall properties of these asteroids could directly result from the disruption of their parent body.
The analysis of return samples from Ryugu and Bennu by the Hayabusa2 (JAXA) and OSIRIS-REx (NASA) spacecraft will allow scientists to verify this by precisely measuring their composition and by determining their formation age. Explore further
Asteroid Day TV launches In Advance Of United Nations International Asteroid Day 30 June 2020
"We have all seen how unprepared the human race was, faced with a pandemic. An asteroid strike is just as real. The consequences could be as serious. We regard it as our duty to make sure we are prepared to deal with the consequences, on an international level, and also to do our utmost to learn how to prevent such an event, by finding and deflecting potential impactors. That is what Asteroid Day is all about," says Dr. Brian May .
Due to COVID19, the official 2020 Asteroid Day programmes will be all digital. In prior years, thousands of independent events were organized around the world. This year local independent programming happens based upon local governmental guidance.
Asteroid, climate change not responsible for mass extinction 215 million years ago
"Previous hypotheses seemed very nebulous, because nobody had ever approached this problem—or any ancient mass extinction problem—in the quantitative way that we did," Fastovsky said. "In the end, we concluded that neither the asteroid impact nor the climate change had anything to do with the extinction, and that the extinction was certainly not as it had been described—abrupt and synchronous. In fact, it was diachronous and drawn-out."
The Adamanian/Revueltian turnover was the perfect candidate for applying the quantitative methods employed by the research team, Fastovsky said.
Happening on Twitter
.@USDOT is committing $21.8M for the FIRST transit project of this kind in the Tampa Bay region. It will connect St… https://t.co/rshZxah8ii realDonaldTrump (from Washington, DC) Thu May 28 21:43:53 +0000 2020
Playing our part, #USSHarrySTruman and strike group representing #the USNavy in first of its kind exercise. https://t.co/i4xr77NvK7 USNavy (from The 7 seas!) Fri May 29 15:20:00 +0000 2020
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