Scientists observe the rare moments when an asteroid crushes

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected a rare moment of disintegration of an asteroid, leaving behind traces of scintillating dust.

Scientists discovered the asteroid "6478 Gault" for the first time in 1988, while it was a very ordinary asteroid. However, at the beginning of this year, scientists discovered something amazing in the Hubble Space Telescope study: the asteroid became "active" and a large luminous "tail" resembling a comet of over 800,000 km, with a thickness of about 4,800 km. A second tail was found several weeks later, with a length of 200,000 kilometers.

Scientists have discovered space rocks that look like asteroids and then turn into comets as they pass near the sun. The increase in solar energy can heat ice and other frozen compounds hidden under layers of dust, turning these substances into gas, resulting in the emission of comet debris forming a long flaming tail.

But the "6478 Gault" does not fit this law because it lies about 344 million kilometers from the sun in a relatively circular orbit, in the central asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

In other words, the Gault 6478 did not sway near the sun. Scientists therefore speculated that another space rock had collided with the asteroid, thus releasing its dusty "nests" all over the place.

Now, thanks to NASA's multiple observations using Hubble Space Telescope data, the puzzle seems to have been solved and scientists have discovered that the "6478 Gault" is breaking apart.

"The self-destruct event is rare," said Oliver Hino, the scientist of the European Southern Observatory, in a press release published Thursday (March 28th).

Hino and his colleagues say that the strange behavior called "YORP effect" is the reason for the constant disappearance of "6478 Gault", which could eventually fade.