Asteroids are different sized boulders circling the sun; their size can vary from only a few hundred meters to several kilometers. An asteroid is often confused with a meteorite; if an asteroid hits Earth, then it’s called a meteorite. If an asteroid gets evaporated before it hits Earth, then it’s called a meteor. Meteors are more often referred to as a ‘shooting star’. Most asteroids that have hit Earth are made up of iron and nickel or silicates. Around sixty-five million years ago, around 90 percent of animals were utterly wiped out from a massive meteorite; this was also the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs. This particular meteorite hit Yucatan, Mexico, but events such as this happen very rarely because of the gravitational pull of Jupiter, which attracts most of the asteroids coming towards Earth.
How Are Asteroids Formed?
Early in the solar system, dust particles collided with each other making small clumps of derbies called planetesimals. Each of these planetesimals has its own little gravitational fields which slowly gathering more and more dust and eventually growing into asteroids and even planets. Sometimes when two asteroids collide, they are traveling at such a slow speed that they merge together into one strangely shaped asteroid.
Where Can Asteroids Be Found?
Lots of asteroids form rings shapes around the sun known as ‘belts’. In the solar system that we live in, there are a total of two asteroids belts: the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter filled with thousands of asteroids, and the Kuiper asteroid belt shaped like a disk extending outside of Neptune’s orbit with tons of asteroids and lots of dwarf planets. The Kuiper belt has the famous dwarf planet Pluto and the belt was named after Gerard Kuiper who released a research paper that hypothesized about objects floating beyond Pluto. Yet, Gerard Kuiper did not discover the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt was discovered in the following years by many scientists and was named after him.
Why Do People Study Asteroids?
We study asteroids, comets, and meteoroids because they hold very valuable information about how our Solar System works: how it came to be, how old it is, what it can provide, etc. Asteroids are part of a group called the minor bodies, the meteoroids can be thought of as tiny grains of rice, they constantly pass by Earth where we can safely see and study them.
Comets
Comets can be seen as dirty snowballs, they’re made mostly of ice from water and frozen gases like dust. They also circle around the sun like asteroids but unlike asteroids, their orbits are much bigger so they can get very close to the sun or be very far away, and when they come into the orbit of another planet, they can collide. For example, in 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy collided with Jupiter; the ice in the core melts and evaporates resulting in a shining tail of light that can be seen at night if it passes by Earth. In the year 2061, the famous Halley Comet will pass Earth again, this particular comet circles around the Sun every 76 years–which is pretty remarkable.
Written by The Lost Man
The Anonymous Helpers (TAH)