Though most people have heard about Comets and Asteroids many are unware of what they are and more significantly, their importance to life itself. Comets and asteroids are often described as small planets differentiating in sizes, some are baseball-sized meteors while some others are about one third the size of the moon. Other common terms used to describe them are rocky and icy bodies left over from the formation of the solar system. According to Don Yeomans from the Propulsion Lab, “Initially there was a great number of Comets and Asteroids, however, most of these bodies have either collided together and formed some of the major planets, were ejected from the inner solar system into the Oort cloud, or were ejected out of the solar system …show more content…
Scientists have studied and conducted research about Comets and Asteroids for years and continue to do so and after ten long years of tracking down Comet 67 and then landing on it, a robotic space mission called Philae has returned promising discovery. There’s evidence which shows Comet 67 is home to certain organic molecules which have not been analyzed to determine their composition. Popular Science spoke to Stephan Ulamec, the head of the Rosetta Lander Team, he hinted “the molecules may not be quite so simple. Larger and more complex molecules can produce similar readings on the device that Philae used, he says, and the team needs more time to work out which molecules it detected.” Another theory which closely ties in with the impact of either a Comet or Asteroid hitting Earth is the disappearance of dinosaurs some sixty five or sixty six years ago. It is inferred in the events where Earth was hit dinosaurs were not the only species to disappear, the fossil record shows numerous other species of the era disappearing as well. The impact essentially changed evolution forever. According to Elisabeth Howell a senior write from Universe Today “The leading theory for this change is a small body (likely an asteroid or a comet) that slammed into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The impact’s force generated enough …show more content…
Since the orbital paths of Comets and Asteroids often crosses Earth’s path, collisions with the Earth have occurred in the past and we can predict there will be more to come. So, the remaining question is not whether a comet will strike the Earth, but rather when the next one will hit. However, it is estimated a catastrophic cometary collision with Earth is not likely to happen until millions of years from now, therefore it is not a fatal threat to us at this moment but studying their characteristics and compositions will only help us. Studies shows evidence in which it seems likely that a comet struck near the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico some 65 million years ago. Earth is bombarded daily with multitude of interplanetary material. Some of the particles are often meteors or shooting stars, they are so small that they are destroyed within the Earth 's atmosphere long before they even reach the
Asteroids are tiny, airless rocky worlds orbiting around the sun and most of them are too small to be called planets, yet, some asteroids are too big too not to be acknowledged and are known as planetoids or minor planets. The mass asteroids are puny but despite their size, asteroids can be deadly. The earth has been hit by many asteroids in the past and can potentially be hit by some again. That's one reason why scientists study asteroids and find ways to avoid them from hitting us or at least predict if they are coming.
Chondrites give geologists insights on the makeup of the early solar system. Geologists are driven by understanding how the Earth came to be what it is today. Chondrites formed at the time o
about to take place. All a meteor is, is a chunk of rock of that is being
A comet is a small icy body that travels in an elliptical orbit around the sun. Halley’s Comet, or 1P/Halley, is the most well-known “periodic” comet that orbits the solar system and returns to Earth’s vicinity approximately every seventy-six years. It is one of the only comets that can be seen from Earth that is visible to the naked-eye, and can appear twice in one’s lifetime. The comet’s last visit was in the year 1986, and it is calculated to return mid-2061.
Fossil records inform us that the mass extinction occurred 65 million years ago. This landmark coincides with and marks the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary. There appeared to be relative consensus among scientific professionals that an asteroid impact caused the mass extinction. According to this theory, “debris from the asteroid’s impact would have superheated the atmosphere so that vegetation burst i...
The Kuiper Belt is an icy-bodied disc shapes area of the Solar System. Kuiper Belt has a circular shape, to be exact, it is a curved plane. It is over 4.5 to 7.4 billion kilometers from Sun. This is roughly 30 to 50 times the distance of Earth from Sun. The Kuiper Belt has been said to resemble the Asteroid Belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. The difference between the Kuiper Belt and the Asteroid Belt is that the bodies are icier due to their distance from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt objects includes Pluto and other comets that orbit beyond Neptune. Most Kuiper Belt objects are made up of frozen volatiles such as methane, water and ammonia. In 1950 astronomer Gerald Kuiper predicted the existence of the Kuiper Belt and the find was named
subcategories such as "Gas Giants", "Terrestrial Planets (Pluto being one of them)" and "Asteroids". They also
Armageddon begins by showing the destruction of the Earth by an asteroid 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs inhabited the earth. According to the narration, the asteroid is said to have been six miles wide, with the power of 10,000 nuclear weapons. The after effects were trillions of tons of dirt and rock thrown into the atmosphere, creating a blanket of dust that the sun was unable to penetrate for 1,000 years. The narrator explained that it happened once, and that it would happen again, it was only a matter of when.
Solar nebula is a rotating flattened disk of gas and dust in which the outer part of the disk became planets while the center bulge part became the sun. Its inner part is hot, which is heated by a young sun and due to the impact of the gas falling on the disk during its collapse. However, the outer part is cold and far below the freezing point of water. In the solar nebula, the process of condensation occurs after enough cooling of solar nebula and results in the formation into a disk. Condensation is a process of cooling the gas and its molecules stick together to form liquid or solid particles. Therefore, condensation is the change from gas to liquid. In this process, the gas must cool below a critical temperature. Accretion is the process in which the tiny condensed particles from the nebula begin to stick together to form bigger pieces. Solar nebular theory explains the formation of the solar system. In the solar nebula, tiny grains stuck together and created bigger grains that grew into clumps, possibly held together by electrical forces similar to those that make lint stick to your clothes. Subsequent collisions, if not too violent, allowed these smaller particles to grow into objects ranging in size from millimeters to kilometers. These larger objects are called planetesimals. As planetesimals moved within the disk and collide with one another, planets formed. Because astronomers have no direct way to observe how the Solar System formed, they rely heavily on computer simulations to study that remote time. Computer simulations try to solve Newton’s laws of motion for the complex mix of dust and gas that we believe made up the solar nebula. Merging of the planetesimals increased their mass and thus their gravitational attraction. That, in turn, helped them grow even more massive by drawing planetesimals into clumps or rings around the sun. The process of planets building undergoes consumption of most of the planetesimals. Some survived planetesimals form small moons, asteroids, and comets. The leftover Rocky planetesimals that remained between Jupiter and Mars were stirred by Jupiter’s gravitational force. Therefore, these Rocky planetesimals are unable to assemble into a planet. These planetesimals are known as asteroids. Formation of solar system is explained by solar nebular theory. A rotating flat disk with center bulge is the solar nebula. The outer part of the disk becomes planets and the center bulge becomes the sun.
He figures out which ones are coming our way, and whether or not they are a threat (Kluger 1). Astronomers estimate that one in a thousand asteroids that pass our Earth will hit us (Booth 98). This may not seem like very many, until you consider that we are hit with at least one basketball sized asteroid every day (Kluger 6). So what happens when our one sizeable asteroid a day ends up being the size of a mountain? Well, if it happened today, we would surely be dead.
...eaky fast reflexes needed to avoid an asteroid. Asteroids have collided with each other before, but it is super rare considering how far apart from each other they are.
The last of the features of the comet are the tails. Most comets have two tails. One tail is made from dust particles and the other, called ion tail, is made gases. As a comet approaches the sun, the frozen gas becomes unfrozen which causes the dust particles to become free. Light pressure from the sun and some other forces cause these materials to move away from the head of the comet and in the opposite direction from the sun. According to Charles A. Schweighauser in his book, entitled Astronomy from A to Z: A Dictionary of Celestial Objects and Ideas, he states that we see comet heads and tails because they not only reflect sunlight, but they also fluoresce—give off their own light—when comets are near the sun. The tails from the comet may be up to 150 million kilometers long each or together.
...planetesimals that once orbited the sun but were, at one point, captured into a planetary orbit by the planet's gravity. Cratering is also a sign of these period, with the collision of planetesimals into larger ones being the explanation.
When it hit the Earth, the asteroid left an enormous crater that measured 24 miles deep and 125 miles wide (Erdman). Just the impact of the asteroid destroyed the forests and landscape of the majority of North America due to its massive shock wave (Erdman). Many species went extinct when the asteroid hit, these species include dinosaurs, ammonites (certain ocean dwelling creatures), pterosaurs, and some plant groups dinosaurs, ammonites (mollusks related to the octopus and the chambered nautilus), pterosaurs, and certain plant groups. Although devastating, the asteroid did not wipe out all of the animals on Earth, it didn’t exterminate fish, frogs, turtles, birds, mammals and crocodilians (Erdman). These animals survived and evolved into the animals that exist today.... ...
Space debris is the collection of useless objects in orbit around Earth. It includes all from erosion, spent rocket stages, old satellites, collisions, and fragments from disintegration. A large number of technical studies are currently developing concepts of active removal of space debris to protect space assets from on orbit collision. Since orbits overlap with new spacecraft therefore debris may collide with operational spacecraft.