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They might look like boring old rocks, but asteroids and meteorites have fascinating stories to tell about the history of the solar system. A new study from the University of Florida traced the origin of almost every asteroid in the inner belt to only five or six minor ancient planets.
The solar system was much harder in its youth than it is today. As the huge disk of dust and gas surrounding the Sun began to clump together, planets and moons were born and torn apart by breaking each other. The eight planets we know today are the survivors of this era, but other protoplanets were probably jostling for space before or during their reign.
Some of these lost worlds explode when they collide with Earth, Mars and Uranus, but they live in the form of moons of these planets. Meteorites, on the other hand, tell stories of ancient ocean planets and planetoids of the size of Mercury that have lived long enough for diamonds to form deep beneath their surface – and have died explosively enough for stones to be thrown away. in space
seem ephemeral and difficult to count, with current classifications involving hundreds of asteroid families. But the new study suggests that by going far enough, these families could be linked together, which means that all the asteroids in the inner belt could come from a few minor planets.
Researchers at the University of Florida examined 200,000 asteroids in the region. inner asteroid belt. For rocks not assigned to families, the team found a correlation between their size and their orbit – specifically, the larger the rock, the more eccentric (or oval) the orbit is. The opposite is true between their size and their orbital inclination – basically, the smaller the rock, the more its orbit is inclined to the flat plane that most objects revolve around.
The researchers say that these connections suggest that 85% of asteroids in the inner belt can be attributed to five known families: Flora, Vesta, Nysa, Polana and Eulalia. The remaining 15% could also fall into these same categories, or a few others that are currently unknown.
"I would not be surprised if we end up tracing the origin of all the asteroids in the main asteroid belt, not just those of" says Stanley Dermott, lead author of the study
Although this kind of collection of celestial rocks may not seem so important to some, researchers say that they better understand their composition could help us find the best way to deflect asteroids found on a trajectory
"These great bodies are forming on Earth, so of course we are very concerned about the number of them. and what types of materials are in them, "says Dermott. "If ever one of these comes to the Earth, and we want to turn it away, we must know what is its nature."
The research was published in the journal Nature Astronomy . The team describes the work in the video below.
Source: University of Florida
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