SPACE — Asteroids fly past our solar system all the time, but we don’t pay much attention to them. But early last week, people’s eyes were on the asteroid nicknamed 7482 (1994 PC1), especially astronomers. What’s the reason? The asteroid, which is two-thirds of a mile or 1.1 kilometers long, passed 1,231,184 miles from Earth on Tuesday, January 18, 2022.
It is one of the most stressful approaches to survival on Earth. Because, an asteroid hurricane of that size will be able to destroy a city, or a large island at once. The good news is that scientists around the world are working on cases like this. The concept is that an asteroid, whatever its name, should not hit the earth. If they threaten, it will be immediately scorched or at least deflected by various engineering physics.
NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies is tasked with identifying all objects that approach Earth such as asteroids. They must track everything that could potentially collide with Earth.
Phys.org on Thursday, January 20, 2022, released an interview with Danilo Marchesini, professor of physics and astronomy at the School of Arts and Sciences. The galaxy formation and revolution specialist explains what asteroids really are, where they come from, and where they go. These are the results of the interview:
What exactly is an asteroid?
Asteroids are rock remnants from the formation of the solar system. They orbit around the sun near the plane of the ecliptic, which is the same plane in which the planets orbit the sun (that is, in the same plane as the Earth).
Most asteroids lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, which is called the asteroid belt.
How many asteroids are there in our solar system?
Currently, we know of and have cataloged several hundred thousand asteroids, and there may be more than 10 million individual asteroids. The larger asteroid has a diameter of about 1,000 kilometers (to note: Earth’s diameter is about 12,756 km). Despite so many, the total mass of all the asteroids is small, estimated to be about 0.05 percent of Earth’s mass.
How did astronomers find and track it?
The first asteroid, Ceres, was discovered in 1801 by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi. Although the discovery was called a fluke, astronomers were (later) looking for objects that theorized (same), orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
In general, asteroids are found by observing the sky, night after night, and identifying fast-moving objects across distant stars. There is a sub-field of astronomy devoted to searching for asteroids systematically with medium/small telescopes scanning the night sky. The smaller the asteroid, the fainter it is, and the harder it is to find.
Are all asteroids the same?
Several asteroids are in the same orbit as Jupiter, either following Jupiter or in front of it. This type of asteroid is called a Trojan. The other lies between the orbits of Mars and Earth, the asteroid Amor. Asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit when they are closest to the sun are called Apollo asteroids, while those that cross Earth’s orbit when they are farthest from the sun are called Aten asteroids.
The asteroid whose orbit closest to Earth last Tuesday, 7482, is one of the Apollo asteroids.
What happens when asteroids collide?
Occasionally, there may be a collision in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, or even a gravitational interaction between the asteroids or a gravitational disturbance with Jupiter itself, resulting in the asteroid being ejected from the asteroid belt. The asteroids Aten and Apollo are thought to be the result of this collision.
What is the fate of asteroids in the long run?
Astronomers theorize that a number of small moons orbiting some of the planets in the solar system may be asteroids trapped in the planet’s gravitational field as they pass. Asteroids can collide with each other, and tiny fragments called meteoroids are often bounced out of the asteroid belt. This is what produces a meteor or meteorite when it enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
Given the huge number of asteroids, astronomers theorize that most of them have interacted and collided with other asteroids during the last 4.6 billion years in the history of the solar system. But in general, most asteroids will continue to orbit the sun.
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