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Old February 23rd 16, 11:00 PM posted to sci.astro
Steve Willner
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Posts: 1,172
Default Most near-Earth asteroids are destroyed by the Sun, long before they get to Earth

In article ,
Yousuf Khan writes:
"A new study finds that most asteroids and comets are destroyed in a
drawn out, long hot fizzle, much farther from the Sun than previously
thought."

Mystery of disappearing asteroids solved | Astronomy.com
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/0...teroids-solved


The paper is in _Nature_ at
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture16934.html
but you will need a subscription or pay to read more than the
Abstract. I didn't find a preprint.

The new result implies that many asteroids, especially dark ones,
disintegrate at a few tens solar radii rather than at the much
smaller distances one might expect. Despite the press release, I
don't see anything about what fraction of asteroids disappear this
way versus the fraction destroyed by hitting a planet.

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