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Asteroids
Asteroids, or planetoids, are rocks larger than meteorites but smaller than planets that orbit around the Sun.
1,071 Questions
When is the next asteroid going to orbit earth?
Well some people say that the world might end in 2039 by an asteroid called apophis. If it hits in the Pacific Ocean then there will be monsunes that are up to 52 feet tall and will flood Hawaii, California, through Alaska. If the asteroid hits the Atlantic Ocean then the lands that are close to the alantic ocean are going to be flooded.
Mars And Jupiter $
Where do most of the known asteroids have elliptical orbits?
Yes, just like all celestial body with a closed orbit.
If you want to be specific, the orbit of the moon is spiral, since it is moving away from us at a pace of 3 cm per year.
What happened when the enormous asteroid hit earth some 65 years ago?
They believe the asteroid that killed off the dinosaur was 30 miles in diameter and impacting the earth at more than 250,000 miles per hour.
Yes, meteors (meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere) do not have tails. However, when a meteoroid vaporizes upon entry, it can create a glowing trail of light behind it known as a meteor train, which can appear as a temporary tail.
If you wanted to find an asteroid with a telescope where would be the best place to look?
The Hoba meteorite is located in the farm known as "Hoba West". This is in the Otjozondjupa Region of Namibia.
How are asteroids different from moon?
Asteroids are technicaly small planets. That in they orbit the sun. An asteroid can become a moon when it is caught by the gravitational pull of a planet and goes into orbit around that planet. Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos are likely candidates for this along with the moons of gas giants Jupiter, Saturn & Uranus as they have no real matter that could have been ejected into space to create a moon like earths moon (Theorised a large mars sized object hit our planet when it was still molten ejecting a blob that became our moon).
So to re-cap asteroids orbit the sun, Moons orbit planets.
What are asteroids and how do they form?
Asteroids are rocky and metallic objects that orbit the Sun but are too small to be considered planets. They are known as minor planets
They have been found inside Earth's orbit to beyond Saturn's orbit. Most, however, are contained within a main belt that exists between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some have orbits that cross Earth's path and some have even hit the Earth in times past
What will happen if an asteroid hits Earth?
It all depends on how big the rock is. If it is a small one, it will burn up in the atmosphere. If it is larger than a small suitcase, it may hit the earth, or burn up, depending on how fast it is traveling.
But really big rocks, 100 meters or more in diameter, will usually impact the planet, causing local devastation, and leaving a crater. A rock 2 kilometers in diameter could cause so much disturbance to the planet's atmosphere that large numbers of animals and plants could die off.
The mass extinction of the dinosaurs is believed to have resulted from an impact by an asteroid or comet about 2 kilometers in diameter.
How do you know asteroids have hit the earth?
The evidence that asteroids have collided with earth before, depends on the surface. The way you can find this if there is unusual shapes in the ground( e.g. really deep ditch, that is too big for a human too dig).
Is Jupiter in the inside or outside of the asteroid belt?
To be correct, it is inside. The formation is Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and then Asteroid belt.
What makes asteroids different from dwarf planets?
You can consider a dwarf planet to be a special case from an asteroid - one that has achieved hydrostatic equilibrium, which basically means that it has enough gravity to force it into a round shape.
Ceres (designated as 1 Ceres) has an average diameter of about 950 km (590 miles). It is by far the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is, however, the smallest dwarf planet. By comparison, Pluto has a diameter of about 2300 km (1430 miles).
The so-called K-T boundary layer is the smoking gun that proved that large asteroids did strike the earth at intervals causing devastation beyond anything that man has seen in recorded history.
Go dig down to the geologic layer that separates the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods (the K-T boundary) and you'll find the rare earth metal iridium, and in quantities far higher than in the rest of the rock around it. Do your digging anywhere on earth. The iridium is there. Whatever it was that crashed into earth some 65 million years ago had a lot of iridium in it.
The impact site was so large, and the event occurred so long ago that the earth "healed" the scar and it was difficult to detect. But now that we knew what we were looking for - a place where a big hole was punched in the lithosphere - we found it in Mexico and the gulf of the same name. Chicxulub. Yukatan, Mexico. How about a crater over a hundred miles across? Big enough?
Look at the moon. Why wouldn't the earth be subject to the same kind of pounding? Oh, we've got an atmosphere to help protect us, and we have both atmospheric and geologic phenomenon that will "erase" the damaged places in time. But the moon has taken some very large shots to the crust. So has earth. Why wouldn't it have had? And somewhere out there is a large rock with our name on it. We will get hit again. It's not a question of if so much as it's a question of when.
With the use of advanced space-based observation platforms, we've identified more locations where the cosmic hammer has struck. There is a lot of reading posted in various locations on the web for the curious investigator. A link is provided below, and it will take you to the Wikipedia post on the K-T boundry. Why not start there?
What is the mass of the largest asteroid?
(The total mass the asteroid belt is lighter than the moon. The total mass the asteroid belt is lighter than the moon.)
However;
If the total mass of the asteroid belt were reconstituted, it would altogether be less than half of the mass of the moon. But if we consider that if the hot molten interior of a hypothesized planet that might have been the asteroid belt was under great pressure and heat, as are all of the known planets, we could then hypothesize that approximately 90+% of the mass of said hypothesized planet would have been expanded by a factor of at least 1600:1. Possibly more if the interior was superheated. That figure is only if the matter of the interior had the matter weight and density of water. If it were denser, having the same density of magma, then the rate of expansion would be much greater. Possibly as much as 12000:1. So if you take this into consideration, then the asteroid belt could indeed have had a total mass great enough to compete with one of the terrestrial planets
How far away is the inner asteroid belt from the sun?
It is not that far away. The asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Are most comets found in either Oort cloud or the asteroid belt?
Rocky asteroids. Icy comets often live in and come from the Kuiper Belt.
What is the mass of a dust speck?
Approximately 3,000,000,000,000, or 3 trillion.
To answer precisely it depends on what the dust is composed of and how much the speck of dust really weighs. I assumed that the average molecular mass of dust was 150 grams/mole (about the weight of 10-12 carbon hydrocarbon), and that a speck of dust weighs 1 microgram (a millionth of a gram or 1 x 10-6 grams).
1 x 10-6 grams ÷ 150 grams/mole = 7 x 10-9 moles
7 x 10-9 moles * 6.02 x 1023 atoms/mole = 4 x 1015 or 4,000,000,000,000,000 or 4 quadrillion
This is approximate as I really don't know the weight of a speck of dust nor its molecular mass, but I think my estimate is reasonable, and if nothing else, I am underestimating the weight of a speck of dust.
Do asteroids orbit around the sun like a planet?
Typically, they orbit the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. However, occasionally their orbits are disrupted by the presence of planets, and they end up in more eccentric orbits. Some of the smaller planetary satellites are thought to be asteroids that have been gravitationally captured.
What is the gravity of a asteroid?
Asteroids come in different sizes, from about 10 meters (by definition), to near the size of a planet (as in Pluto or Eris). Correspondingly, the surface gravity will be less or more, depending on the size. The surface gravity of an object 10 meters in diameter will be insignificant - you would probably fly off into space if you push yourself off with a slight movement of your finger.
Is the comet belt in between mars and Jupiter?
No. The asteroid belt is an area between Mars and Jupiter where most of the solar system's asteroids orbit. The Kupier belt is much farther out. It is a region that contains a large number of comets orbiting beyond Neptune.
Does the asteroid belt have any space probes?
As of now, there are no space probes specifically dedicated to exploring the asteroid belt. However, some spacecraft, like NASA's Dawn mission, have studied specific asteroids within the belt before moving on to other targets.
How do you distinguish the difference between an asteroid and a satellite?
It's a bit hard to distinguish them. Planets should not flicker as stars do, but that's not a very sure way to distinguish them. Some of the planets are among the brightest "stars" in the sky - especially Venus, Jupiter, and sometimes Mars. But mainly, planets - and especially the ones that are closer to us - change their position rather quickly. You can notice this change in position if you observe several consecutive nights. Just check the position, compared to the background stars.
