Most internal belt asteroids come from only 5 or 6 planets

This color image is made from images taken by imaging
system on the Galileo spacecraft about 14 minutes before his
Most asteroids and meteorites come from the bursting of a handful of minor planets formed during the childhood of our solar system, a new study.

"These great bodies stand out from the Earth, so of course we are very concerned about the number of these elements and the types of materials they contain."

The study, published in Nature Astronomy found at least 85% of the 200,000 asteroids in the internal asteroid belt – the main source of meteorites on the Earth – come from five or six ancient minor planets. According to Stanley Dermott, lead author and theoretical astronomer of the University of Florida, the remaining 15% can also be traced back to the same group of primordial bodies.

This discovery is important to understand the materials that shaped our own rocky planet. Dermott says.

The result provides a more solid understanding of the evolutionary history of asteroids and the materials that form them-information Dermott said could prove essential to protect the Earth and ourselves from meteorites the size of the Statue of Liberty and asteroids more powerful than atomic bombs.

"These great bodies moving on Earth, we are obviously very concerned about the number of these objects and the types of materials they contain," says Dermott, Professor Emeritus at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. . "If ever one of these comes to the earth, and we want to deviate, we must know what is its nature."

Cannon blows mimetic asteroids distributing water

The Dermott team demonstrates that the type of orbit is an asteroid It depends on the size of the asteroid. This discovery suggests that the differences in meteorites found on Earth appear because of the evolutionary changes that occurred in some large precursor bodies that existed more than four billion years ago, says Dermott.

"I would not be surprised to trace the origin of all asteroids in the main asteroid belt, not just those in the inner belt, to a small number of known parent bodies," says Dermott [19659010] Knowledge of the evolutionary history of the bodies that formed our solar system helps theoretical astronomers to answer questions related to where planets like ours might exist in the universe, explains Dermott But first, he says we must understand the processes that produced the planet we live on.

Source: University of Florida