Explanation:
What is this strange object?
First discovered on ground based
LINEAR
images on January 6, the object appeared unusual
enough to investigate further with the
Hubble Space Telescope last week.
Pictured above, what Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 A2 is unlike any object ever seen before.
At first glance, the object appears to have the
tail of a comet.
Close inspection, however, shows a 140-meter
nucleus offset from the tail center, very unusual structure near the nucleus, and no discernable gas in the tail.
Knowing that the
object orbits in the
asteroid belt
between Mars and
Jupiter, a preliminary hypothesis that appears to explain all of the known clues is that
P/2010 A2
is the debris left over from a recent
collision
between two small asteroids.
If true,
the collision likely occurred at over 15,000 kilometers per hour -- five times the speed of a
rifle bullet --
and liberated energy in excess of a
nuclear bomb.
Pressure from sunlight would then spread out the debris into a trailing tail.
Future
study of P/2010 A2 may better indicate the nature of the progenitor collision and may help humanity better understand the
early years of our Solar System, when many similar collisions occurred.
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