Post by Ravenchamp on Nov 8, 2013 7:18:10 GMT -5
A never-before-seen asteroid with six comet-like tails
A bizarre, never-before-seen asteroid with six comet-like tails has been found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and scientists are shocked.
"I'm trying not to use the word 'freak,'" said David Jewitt of UCLA and lead author of a paper about the six-tailed asteroid, "but that's what it is. It is definitely freakish."
A NASA release described the asteroid as looking like "a rotating lawn sprinkler" with dust radiating out from it like spokes on a wheel.
What makes this find especially weird is that asteroids almost never have any kind of tail at all.
Those dramatic blue tails we see in images from space are generally associated with comets -- "dirty snowballs" that originate in the outer regions of our solar system. The tail forms when the comet's orbit takes it close enough to the sun that the ice in its nucleus melts, releasing dust and gas that trail behind it.
But asteroids, also known as space rocks, generally originate in the asteroid belt where it is mostly too hot for ice to survive. When they zoom through space, they look like small, moving points of light.
"This thing should just be a rock," said Jewitt of the six-tailed asteroid. "Imagine if you went in your backyard and a rock suddenly started spouting this stuff off."
So, what's going on here? No one is totally sure. A computer model by Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute in Germany suggests that the six tails could have formed by separate dust ejection events that occurred at irregular intervals on April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4 of this year.
www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-asteroid-with-six-comet-like-tails-20131107,0,4090489.story#axzz2k3W2E8ei
A bizarre, never-before-seen asteroid with six comet-like tails has been found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and scientists are shocked.
"I'm trying not to use the word 'freak,'" said David Jewitt of UCLA and lead author of a paper about the six-tailed asteroid, "but that's what it is. It is definitely freakish."
A NASA release described the asteroid as looking like "a rotating lawn sprinkler" with dust radiating out from it like spokes on a wheel.
What makes this find especially weird is that asteroids almost never have any kind of tail at all.
Those dramatic blue tails we see in images from space are generally associated with comets -- "dirty snowballs" that originate in the outer regions of our solar system. The tail forms when the comet's orbit takes it close enough to the sun that the ice in its nucleus melts, releasing dust and gas that trail behind it.
But asteroids, also known as space rocks, generally originate in the asteroid belt where it is mostly too hot for ice to survive. When they zoom through space, they look like small, moving points of light.
"This thing should just be a rock," said Jewitt of the six-tailed asteroid. "Imagine if you went in your backyard and a rock suddenly started spouting this stuff off."
So, what's going on here? No one is totally sure. A computer model by Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute in Germany suggests that the six tails could have formed by separate dust ejection events that occurred at irregular intervals on April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4 of this year.
www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-asteroid-with-six-comet-like-tails-20131107,0,4090489.story#axzz2k3W2E8ei