Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 1:28 pm
This is a C-type asteroid, so we know that it is made up of the primitive earliest material forming the Solar System. The selection of a carbonaceous asteroid was based on obtaining good samples of such material unaltered by passage through the atmosphere in the form of meteorites.
Yeah, but now we have a pure, uncontaminated blob of Original Stuff that hasn't been cooked by passage through our air nor slimed by all of the bugs our air and ground are full of.
That is an amazing achievement.
Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2023 1:28 pm
FWIW, there is no evidence that any planets were ever shattered and formed debris in the Solar System. The largest bodies that collided and created asteroids were at most a few hundred kilometers in diameter.
I find that problematic.
Earth is supposed to have been smacked by A Giant Impactor a while back and the result is supposed to be our lovely little Moon. One Moon. No others. Not even tiny, littly bits. The odds of absolutely
everything falling back to the Earth or merging into Luna don't seem very high.
But that's only intuition. I don't have a supercomputer to model this on so maybe I'm being simplistic and wrong?
However: yet another Giant Impactor is sometimes blamed for "tipping" Uranus and her satellites. This one, too, left nothing behind. That, too, seems unlikely.
Venus rotating "backwards"? Oh, yes, yet another Giant Impactor. Why Venus has nothing even resembling a Phobos as a moon after the Giant Impact is a mild mystery.
My tea getting cold? That, too, must be a Giant Impactor.
Still, at least we now have good Science telling us that only Little Impactors such as Bennu are likely to hit us any time soon and even Bennu isn't
very likely.
Unless Osiris tapped it hard enough to alter its orbit a bit?
After DART, that would be rather ironic.
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