A Mysterious-Object From Earth's Distant history Has Returned
A first-of-its-kind space rock full with pristine material from the formation of the Earth itself has return to the inner solar system, after billions of years in the cosmic boondocks. And it could help us piece jointly our planet’s origin story.
Four and a half billion years ago, chunks of the same material that shaped Earth and the other rocky planets are consideration to have been flung into the Oort cloud, a ring of icy debris encircling the furthest edge of the solar system. Untouched, they’ve been preserved for eons in the deep freeze of space. Now, astronomers have marked one of these fossils nearby, marking the very first observation of a rocky object from the Oort-cloud.
This is wonderful exciting, because it could be a piece of what formed the Earth” Olivier Hainaut—an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory and co-author on the latest Science Advances study telling the discovery—told Gizmodo.
“You don’t at all suppose to find a rocky asteroid on an Oort cloud orbit. That’s wrong.”
The object, dubbed PANSTARRS, was spotted in 2014 by Pan-STARRS1, a Hawaiian telescope used to recognize rogue comets and asteroids in our planet’s backyard. The telescope routinely surveys the entire sky & turns up thousands of uninteresting hunks of debris. But as soon as PANSTARRS’ orbit had been calculated, Hainaut and his colleagues realized they had found amazing exceptional.
The shape of the orbit was indicative of a long period comet—an icy corpse that fell into the inner solar system from the Oort cloud. But as comets from the Oort cloud hurl toward the Sun, they let go a long tail of sublimating ice & dust. This one didn’t
Curious, the astronomers determined to take a closer look using the European Southern Observatory’s Very big Telescope in Chile. And things got even stranger. By studying the faint light reflect off PANSTARRS, Hainaut and his colleagues learned that it is not full with ice at all, but with rocky material. In terms of composition, it’s a classic S-type asteroid, similar to those establish main asteroid belt flanked by Mars and Jupiter.
“If you’d shown me the spectrum, I would have presently said this is another stupid asteroid,” Hainaut said. “If you show me the orbit, I’d say yea, it’s a normal long-period comet. But you don’t at all expect to find a rocky asteroid on an Oort cloud orbit. That’s wrong.”
One possible clarification is that an asteroid was flung into the Oort cloud somewhat lately, before falling back on the way to the inner solar system. But it soon became obvious that this wasn’t the case. “When we observed it very cautiously, its range showed that the rocks hadn’t been backed by the Sun,” Hainaut explain. “They’re primordial.”
Eventually, the astronomers finished that PANSTARRS was formed in the inner solar system long ago, before being evicted into the Oort cloud as the rocky planets themselves were coalescing. That makes it a possible building block of Earth, Venus, Mercury, or Mars.
“This one is the opening uncooked asteroid we have found: it has been preserved in the best freezer there is,” lead study author Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said in a statement.
Now that PANSTARRS has wedged our attention, astronomers are hoping to find additional objects like it. There are several competing theories about how the solar system formed, and they predict different ratios of icy to rocky objects in the Oort cloud. “Depending on how the planets migrated, the number of rocky planetesimals in the Oort cloud will change dramatically,” Hainaut said. “Just by counting these objects up and doing statistics, we can say which theories are totally wrong and which ones survive.”
PANSTARRS has already complete its closest approach to the Sun, and it’s now on its way back to the outer solar system. But if we get lucky, one of its cousins may whiz even earlier to Earth, allowing astronomers to get a full look at its composition. This could lend insight into the precise conditions under which our planet was shaped. Our history is flying around out there, and if we’re patient enough, we’ll discover it.
Four and a half billion years ago, chunks of the same material that shaped Earth and the other rocky planets are consideration to have been flung into the Oort cloud, a ring of icy debris encircling the furthest edge of the solar system. Untouched, they’ve been preserved for eons in the deep freeze of space. Now, astronomers have marked one of these fossils nearby, marking the very first observation of a rocky object from the Oort-cloud.
This is wonderful exciting, because it could be a piece of what formed the Earth” Olivier Hainaut—an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory and co-author on the latest Science Advances study telling the discovery—told Gizmodo.
“You don’t at all suppose to find a rocky asteroid on an Oort cloud orbit. That’s wrong.”
The object, dubbed PANSTARRS, was spotted in 2014 by Pan-STARRS1, a Hawaiian telescope used to recognize rogue comets and asteroids in our planet’s backyard. The telescope routinely surveys the entire sky & turns up thousands of uninteresting hunks of debris. But as soon as PANSTARRS’ orbit had been calculated, Hainaut and his colleagues realized they had found amazing exceptional.
The shape of the orbit was indicative of a long period comet—an icy corpse that fell into the inner solar system from the Oort cloud. But as comets from the Oort cloud hurl toward the Sun, they let go a long tail of sublimating ice & dust. This one didn’t
Curious, the astronomers determined to take a closer look using the European Southern Observatory’s Very big Telescope in Chile. And things got even stranger. By studying the faint light reflect off PANSTARRS, Hainaut and his colleagues learned that it is not full with ice at all, but with rocky material. In terms of composition, it’s a classic S-type asteroid, similar to those establish main asteroid belt flanked by Mars and Jupiter.
“If you’d shown me the spectrum, I would have presently said this is another stupid asteroid,” Hainaut said. “If you show me the orbit, I’d say yea, it’s a normal long-period comet. But you don’t at all expect to find a rocky asteroid on an Oort cloud orbit. That’s wrong.”
One possible clarification is that an asteroid was flung into the Oort cloud somewhat lately, before falling back on the way to the inner solar system. But it soon became obvious that this wasn’t the case. “When we observed it very cautiously, its range showed that the rocks hadn’t been backed by the Sun,” Hainaut explain. “They’re primordial.”
Eventually, the astronomers finished that PANSTARRS was formed in the inner solar system long ago, before being evicted into the Oort cloud as the rocky planets themselves were coalescing. That makes it a possible building block of Earth, Venus, Mercury, or Mars.
“This one is the opening uncooked asteroid we have found: it has been preserved in the best freezer there is,” lead study author Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said in a statement.
PANSTARRS has already complete its closest approach to the Sun, and it’s now on its way back to the outer solar system. But if we get lucky, one of its cousins may whiz even earlier to Earth, allowing astronomers to get a full look at its composition. This could lend insight into the precise conditions under which our planet was shaped. Our history is flying around out there, and if we’re patient enough, we’ll discover it.
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