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The days are slowly falling on a distant space rock being explored by a NASA probe, which has puzzled scientists trying to understand why.
Scientists have discovered that the day on the asteroid called "Pino" was getting shorter by about a second every 100 years, without one finding the reason for it.
NASA, based on the OSIRIS-Rex mission, is monitoring NASA to understand other objects that pose a potential threat to the Earth or that can be mined.
Pino is 110 million meters from Earth, traveling at a speed of about 101,000 km / h in space and conducting a full cycle around him every 4.3 hours.
The probe examines the data collected by ground telescopes between 1999 and 2005 and the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012.
When scientists examined Hubble's data, they found that the asteroid's rotational speed in 2012 did not match their predictions based on previous data.
The increase in the business figure may not seem to be significant, but scientists say that over a long period this can result in radical changes in the space.
"Recent data, though very small, have attracted the attention of scientists," said Mike Nolan, lead author of the new study, and a geophysical scientist at the University's Moon and Planetary Laboratory. Arizona, which also runs the OSIRIS-REX mission. This does not correspond to the expectations and calculations of astronomers on terrestrial data. "
"We need to look for evidence that there has been to a certain extent a different situation in the recent past and that things may change in space over time," Nolan said.
According to the authors of the study, one of the possible explanations for the phenomenon of acceleration of turnover rate over millions of years is that the asteroid can lose its material or break completely.
The idea of accelerating the rotation of the asteroid has been predicted since 2000, but scientists confirmed this phenomenon for the first time in 2007.
Until now, the phenomenon of acceleration has only been detected by a few asteroids. According to scientists, the change in Pino's rotational speed could change shape. Dr. Nolan also suggests that the cause of increased rotation of asteroids is probably a phenomenon called the effect of uvreb, changing the rotation of a small object, such as & nbsp; An asteroid, in a concentrated solar orbit due to the dispersion of solar radiation from the body surface and the emission of body heat radiation, so that the sun's rays striking the asteroid reflect themselves again in the space In the direction of light inside and outside the asteroid until the rotation of the small space object b The form is faster or slower, depending on its shape and rotation.
The OSIRIS-REX mission is expected to determine the rate of rotation of the Pino asteroid this year, which will help scientists accurately determine the cause of the increase in the number of rotations. NASA's mission is also expected to yield samples of Pino on Earth 2023.
Source: Daily Mail
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