Sun is tearing a huge asteroid apart – and Earth is flying through it,
The sun is tearing a huge asteroid to pieces – and now Earth is flying right through the fallout, a NASA scientist has warned.
Searching through millions of meteor observations, scientists spotted a cluster of 282 shooting stars that seemed to emerge from the same point in space.
According to the researchers, these pieces of rocky debris are the aftermath of a crumbling asteroid, or rock–comet, that got a little too close to the sun.
Now, as our planet sweeps through the rock–comet’s cluttered wake, keen stargazers on Earth will be able to spot a brand–new meteor shower lighting up the sky.
Meteor showers occur when Earth moves through a cloud of dust and small rocks littering space, which fall into the atmosphere and burn up with a dazzling flash.
Earth’s latest meteor shower, dubbed M2026–A1, will be visible each year from March 16 to April 7.
While it won’t be as spectacular as better–known meteor showers, this stunning display gives scientists a unique insight into the doomed rock–comet that created it.
Lead author Dr Patrick Shober, from NASA’s Johnson Space Centre, wrote in The Conversation: ‘What makes this discovery so exciting is that we are essentially witnessing a hidden asteroid being baked to bits.’
Each day, thousands of tiny space rocks fall to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere to produce glowing meteorites.
As they collide with particles of air at speeds over 15 miles (24 km) per second, their outer layers are instantly vaporised into an electrically charged gas, which glows brightly enough to be seen with the naked eye.
In the solar system, the majority of these sand–sized particles are produced by comets or asteroids breaking up into tiny pieces.
When an icy comet or rocky asteroid starts to crumble – either due to heating, or a collision with another object – scientists say that it has become ‘active’.
When astronomers want to track down these active objects, they can either look for the glowing tail that is the tell–tale sign of a comet, or watch for the meteor showers produced by their trail of wreckage.
By carefully examining this small cluster of meteors, Dr Shober has managed to reconstruct their origin.
What makes this meteor shower so unique is that it appears to originate from a rare type of object known as a ‘rock–comet’.
Most meteor showers come from comets, which disintegrate as their icy surfaces jump from solid to gas, in a process known as sublimation, as they approach the sun.
Asteroids can become active when they are torn apart by the gravitational forces of a nearby planet or spin too fast, but they can also act like comets under certain conditions.
When a dry, rocky asteroid gets extremely close to the sun or faces extreme forces, it can also start to break up into a dusty wake that glows just like a comet’s tail.
Dr Shober says: ‘Based on how these meteors break apart when they hit our atmosphere, we can tell they are moderately fragile, but tougher than stuff from comets. This finding tells us that intense solar heat is literally cracking the asteroid’s surface, baking out trapped gases and causing it to crumble.’
The asteroid’s dramatic self–destruction is a product of its ‘extreme orbit’, plunging almost five times closer to the sun than Earth does.
Dr Shober says that this discovery ‘reveals hidden populations of near–Earth asteroids, which is vital information for planetary defence’.
However, although the meteor shower is strong evidence, the parent asteroid remains elusive.
The chances of spotting the relatively dark and fast–moving object from Earth are slim, but Dr Shober is holding out hopes for NASA’s NEO Surveyor mission launching in 2027.
He says: ‘This space telescope, dedicated to planetary defence and the discovery of dark, hazardous, sun–approaching asteroids, will be the ideal tool for searching for the shower’s origin.’
