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The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a six-tailed asteroid in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Scientists say they've never seen anything like it. Incredibly, the comet-like tails change shape as the asteroid sheds dust. The streams have occurred over several months."
A research team led by the University of California, Los Angeles, believes the asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, is rotating so much that its surface is flying apart. It's believed to be a fragment of a larger asteroid damaged in a collision 200 million years ago.
5 comments:
It's believed to be a fragment of a larger asteroid damaged in a collision 200 million years ago.
Okay, I'm sorry, they know the collision happened 200 million years ago rather than 10,000 years ago exactly how?
This is the sort of crap that drives me nuts about reporting on scientific matters.
Go to the comments there, YH, they're having a discussion about it.
@deborah,
Lot of noise to not much signal in those comments, but I get the drift.
Do I think that astronomers can reliably discuss orbital impacts between small celestial bodies going back 200M years? Well, maybe.
Do I think it's really easy for a reporter to say "Astronomers at XXX labs, looking for when P2013 /P5's orbit intersected another known asteroid, calculate the collision occurred 200M years ago"? Yeah, definitely.
I love that Hubble!
Yes, YH, they were having a fun time being silly over there.
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