A new study suggests that Earth likely uses its gravity to tear large asteroids into smaller pieces, reducing the risk of dangerous objects hitting the planet’s surface. This was pointed out by the server Live Science.
According to a new study published in a prestigious journal The Astrophysical Journal LettersEarth’s gravity can act as a protective system to protect us from potentially dangerous visitors from space.
Planets and their moons create so-called tidal forces, i.e. huge gravitational forces that act on surrounding objects and are responsible for e.g. tides. But these forces can also cause tidal disintegration, where the body cannot withstand the difference in gravity and disintegrates.
One of the most famous examples of tidal breakup is Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) in 1994, which was torn apart by Jupiter’s gravity. The study suggests that similar tidal decay may occur on Earth-like planets.
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Researchers Mikael Granvik and Kevin Walsh modeled the orbits of asteroids and found that some of them may have formed through tidal breakup due to the action of Earth’s gravity.
The researchers compared the model’s results with data collected by a NASA-funded telescope in Arizona. They found that the actual number of asteroids around Earth was significantly higher than the model predicted, but they were smaller and orbited near Earth and Venus.
It occurred to Granvik that the fragments could have been formed by the tidal disintegration of larger bodies. Later, with the help of Kevin Walsh, he took this assumption into account when creating a new model that confirmed the data collected by the telescope.
Granvik said that about a decade ago, they looked for families of near-Earth asteroids that could be formed by tidal breakup, but found none. However, the new model confirmed that smaller asteroids formed in this way were indeed present near Earth and Venus.
Although the tidal breakup creates more smaller asteroids, scientists stress that there is no cause for concern. These fragments are smaller than one kilometer and do not pose a threat to the extinction of humanity. But they can cause incidents similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 or the Tunguska explosion of 1908.
2023-12-28 20:28:00
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