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Asteroid P/2010 A2: When was the collision?
I just saw today's image of the strange tail of 'asteroid' P/2010 A2
on the APOD website at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html If, as many suggest, its unique appearance is the result of a recent collision between two asteroids (possibly of the Flora family, which may have spawned the famous asteroid hit at Chicxulub), a good question is: how recent is recent? The links I've checked do not discuss this. Are we talking about years, centuries, millennia? Anybody have a sense how long it might take before such collisional debris calms down and loses its tail? |
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Asteroid P/2010 A2: When was the collision?
stargene wrote:
I just saw today's image of the strange tail of 'asteroid' P/2010 A2 on the APOD website at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html If, as many suggest, its unique appearance is the result of a recent collision between two asteroids (possibly of the Flora family, which may have spawned the famous asteroid hit at Chicxulub), a good question is: how recent is recent? I am not an expert in this area, but I believe the typical timescale from "collison puts some debris on an Earth-crossing orbit" to "debris hits Earth" is on the order of a few tens of millions of years. ciao, -- -- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" Dept of Astronomy, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." -- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam |
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Asteroid P/2010 A2: When was the collision?
On 4 Feb., 13:50, "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
wrote: stargene wrote: I just saw today's image of the strange tail of 'asteroid' P/2010 A2 on the APOD website at *http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html If, as many suggest, its unique appearance is the result of a recent collision between two asteroids (possibly of the Flora family, which may have spawned the famous asteroid hit at Chicxulub), a good question is: how recent is recent? The asteroid is in the main belt, perihelion is 2 AU, it never comes near the Earth. See http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ find an asteroid, click on link, there is a search field, enter P/2010 A2 Regards Carsten Nielsen Denmark |
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Asteroid P/2010 A2: When was the collision?
snip
The asteroid is in the main belt, perihelion is 2 AU, it never comes near the Earth. snip Regards Carsten Nielsen Denmark Okay... the emphasis of my original query gradually slid on over into areas I never intended. It was never my concern that this asteroid (or its debris) was going to migrate down into near earth orbit and threaten our already tortured world. I'm aware that the asteroid will stay in the asteroid belt. I merely wanted to know, based on standard planetary system physics, how long has it had its odd tail and knowing that, when was the hypothetical collision likely to have taken place. That's all. To restate: given tidal forces, solar wind etc., and other differential dispersal mechanisms which would gradually dissipate the tail, we should be able to guess roughly how long ago it got smacked upside its head. :-) This would help us understand the long term real collisional processes in the Belt. cheers, Gene |
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Dear friends, I wonder: if P/2010 A2 belongs to the Flora family, like the other that seems to have killed the dinosaurs, are we sure that the story couldn't be repeated? Sorry for my bad english, I'm italian. In an important tv program someone told that P/2010 A2 is approachig to our planet? maybe they wanted only terrorize us? Massimo Last edited by cropcircle : September 19th 11 at 01:37 PM. |
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