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NASA Spots Mysterious Space Debris
Originally posted in rast and rat (not by me):
> NASA scientists have spotted a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern with
> trailing streamers of dust that is unlike any image astronomers have
> seen before.
>
> The behavior is not typical of comets, UCLA investigator David Jewitt
> explains, and researchers believe something unprecedented has been
> spotted:
>
> Pic here: http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen...3/original.jpg
>
> This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal
> comets. [...] The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably
> recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation
> pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in
> the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from
> tiny unseen parent bodies.
>
> Across the vastness of space, chances are slim that scientists would
> have a camera pointed in the right direction and set to capture images
> at the moment two random asteroids collide. These conditions, it
> seems, haven't been met until now.
>
> If what astronomers believe is correct, NASA's Hubble Space
> Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 happened to be correctly oriented just
> as two asteroids slammed into each other 90 million miles away from
> the Earth.
>
> Scientists are guessing the collision happened at speeds over 11,000
> miles per hour, which is what scientists believe the average speed of
> asteroid collisions are. (see photo below)
>
> It seems that only one asteroid, named P/2010 A2, survived the impact
> and is seen in the image glowing just outside of the X-debris pattern.
> It is assumed that the other asteroid disintegrated fully.
>
> Astronomers have long assumed that these types of collisions are
> common, but they've never been directly recorded until now. The join
> of the X is thought to mark the location where the impact occurred,
> while the distinctive X-shape was created by debris being swept into
> tail formations by the pressure of sunlight.
>
> Scientists have long noted that the asteroid belt of our solar system
> contains evidence of ancient collisions. They believe that a similar
> such collision may have produced an asteroid fragment that became the
> meteorite that struck the Earth 65 million years ago and caused the
> mass extinction of the dinosaurs.
Anybody else think the leading edge looks like a Centauri Vorchan
Cruiser with its head blown off?
Originally posted in rast and rat (not by me):
> NASA scientists have spotted a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern with
> trailing streamers of dust that is unlike any image astronomers have
> seen before.
>
> The behavior is not typical of comets, UCLA investigator David Jewitt
> explains, and researchers believe something unprecedented has been
> spotted:
>
> Pic here: http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen...3/original.jpg
>
> This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal
> comets. [...] The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably
> recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation
> pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in
> the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from
> tiny unseen parent bodies.
>
> Across the vastness of space, chances are slim that scientists would
> have a camera pointed in the right direction and set to capture images
> at the moment two random asteroids collide. These conditions, it
> seems, haven't been met until now.
>
> If what astronomers believe is correct, NASA's Hubble Space
> Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 happened to be correctly oriented just
> as two asteroids slammed into each other 90 million miles away from
> the Earth.
>
> Scientists are guessing the collision happened at speeds over 11,000
> miles per hour, which is what scientists believe the average speed of
> asteroid collisions are. (see photo below)
>
> It seems that only one asteroid, named P/2010 A2, survived the impact
> and is seen in the image glowing just outside of the X-debris pattern.
> It is assumed that the other asteroid disintegrated fully.
>
> Astronomers have long assumed that these types of collisions are
> common, but they've never been directly recorded until now. The join
> of the X is thought to mark the location where the impact occurred,
> while the distinctive X-shape was created by debris being swept into
> tail formations by the pressure of sunlight.
>
> Scientists have long noted that the asteroid belt of our solar system
> contains evidence of ancient collisions. They believe that a similar
> such collision may have produced an asteroid fragment that became the
> meteorite that struck the Earth 65 million years ago and caused the
> mass extinction of the dinosaurs.
Anybody else think the leading edge looks like a Centauri Vorchan
Cruiser with its head blown off?
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