"How the Hell Did This Asteroid Get All the Way ..." Topic

…Out Past Neptune?.

"A rock that formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter seems to have somehow traveled to the orbit of Neptune, according to a new observation.

When scientists first observed the 291-kilometer-wide asteroid dubbed "2004 EW95," they immediately knew something strange, based on the way it reflected too little ultraviolet light. When they took another look at it with the Very Large Telescope in Chile, it appeared to have been made of materials normally associated with asteroids much closer to the Sun, like iron, silicon, and carbon.

"It's very carbon-rich," Thomas Puzia, astronomy and astrophysics professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and one of the study's authors, told Gizmodo. "It's an asteroid that has been very likely flung out from the from the inner solar system, and displaced to the outskirts by interactions with the migrating planets."…"

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

How? Come on, guys, isn't it obvious?

Dan

Clickbait. Not familiar with Gizmodo … are all the article titles like that?

The composition of the asteroid in question is interesting and it is relevant to a large number of other investigations beside the theory described in the article. But it's not that unexpected and anomalous as to merit a "How the Hell …". After all, the theory they discuss (and many others) were established by observation of the same and similar phenomena.

Our high school science class did not give us a decent understanding of our neighbourhood. Space is really big, and on the average, pretty much empty. But it's amazing how much crap makes up basically empty.

I'm with Cacique Caribe's assessment! :)

I'm not saying it was aliens but……..it was Jupiter.

And nice pictures Etotheipi. I knew Pluto came withing Neptune's orbit, I didn't realize how close it got to Uranus's orbit. Wish the orbit of Eris was also in the diagram. I wonder how eccentric it is.

Damn Jupiter coming here and taking our asteroids!

Damn Jupiter coming here and taking our asteroids!

No. That's a good thing. I don't want any 291 km rock anywhere near us.

Don't worry. Klendathu will send it back our way. :)

Dan

Because he wouldn't stop and ask directions, like she told him to. Now they're way out past Neptune, and out of gas…

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Just a dumb article, interesting to people with little astronomy. There are asteroids that share Earth's orbit. There are asteroids inside Earth's orbit. There are asteroids that pass inside Mercury's orbit. There are asteroids all over the place. It's a very messy solar system. There's all kinds of detritus out past Neptune. There's nothing to clean up out there. And the interaction of orbiting masses can throw stuff all over, even out of the solar system. After all, Voyager did not get it's tremendous velocity from chemical rockets – it spent decades as the hot potato stealing momentum from all four members of the outer solar system.

Jupiter is the odds on favorite, since it has the vast majority of the non-Sun gravity, but this just isn't a surprising thing. Barely unusual.

No. That's a good thing. I don't want any 291 km rock anywhere near us.

You might not want your own asteroid.
But I do, and if Jupiter keeps stealing them, I'll never have one.

Andrew, I think you missed the point.

The asteroid in question has been shown, by its chemical composition, to have been formed when the inner planets were forming, and in the same vicinity. It should also have be in orbit about one of these inner planets, in this case, just outside Mars orbit.

The fact that it is in orbit past Neptune is odd. But it seems to give credence to the Grand Tack hypothesis. The fact that there are asteroids everywhere is irrelevant.

link

Ya, it's a Gizmodo article. But the gist of the piece is in the last 2 paragraphs.

It likely started in the main belt based on similarly, but my point is that things move around a lot over eons. The asteroids inside the main belt were at one point in the belt. Phobos and Deimos and a fair number of other natural satellites started out in the belt. While the orbits of planets and asteroids are fairly predictable over the tiny span of human civilization they are very unstable over long periods. If I understand things correctly if an asteroid has a close pass with a larger body it is more likely to get flung entirely out of the solar system than captured as a moon. It takes a smaller change in velocity to wind up in Trans-Neptunian space than to fall into the Sun.

But Phobos and Deimos migrating from the asteroid belt to be captured by Mars is far, far less significant a move than 2004 EW95 being found past Neptune. By a factor of about 20.

As for Jupiter "slingshotting" the asteroid out into the edges of Neptune's orbit, I think that's what I'm alluding to on the May 10th entry. But there is more to it than that. Jupiter wasn't always in its current position. From Wiki:

link