Asteroids

Hubble Telescope discovers a new ‘3-body problem’ puzzle among Kuiper Belt asteroids (video)

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illustration of two asteroids in deep space, with a shiny silver space telescope as an inset in the lower left of the frame

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered that a system of asteroids in the distant Kuiper Belt may be triplets, not twins as previously suspected. If so, the stable trio of icy space rocks would be just the second example of three gravitationally bound space rocks found in the Kuiper Belt, the doughnut-shaped region of icy … Read more

Scientists say 2 asteroids may actually be fragments of destroyed planets from our early solar system

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Scientists believe that two asteroids might be fragments of long-lost “planetary embryos” from the early solar system. These embryos, somewhere between small planetesimals and fully formed planets, were abundant during the solar system’s formative stages and played a critical role in planetary formation. Two asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, (246) … Read more