Apr 24, 2020 02:03 AM
https://www.space.com/interstellar-aster...ystem.html
INTRO: A cache of interstellar asteroids may have been hiding under scientists' noses for billions of years, researchers say. That's according to new research focused on a handful of strange space rocks known as Centaurs, which orbit the sun in the neighborhood of Jupiter and Saturn.
Astronomers have long been puzzled by Centaurs because their orbits are very unpredictable, with simulations suggesting that they should bang into things or fly out of the solar system. The new research suggests that's because they were stolen by our solar system when it was very young. With so much less expansion under the universe's belt, stars were closer together.
"The close proximity of the stars meant that they felt each others' gravity much more strongly in those early days than they do today," Fathi Namouni, lead author of the study and an astronomer at Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur in France, said in a statement. "This enabled asteroids to be pulled from one star system to another." (MORE)
INTRO: A cache of interstellar asteroids may have been hiding under scientists' noses for billions of years, researchers say. That's according to new research focused on a handful of strange space rocks known as Centaurs, which orbit the sun in the neighborhood of Jupiter and Saturn.
Astronomers have long been puzzled by Centaurs because their orbits are very unpredictable, with simulations suggesting that they should bang into things or fly out of the solar system. The new research suggests that's because they were stolen by our solar system when it was very young. With so much less expansion under the universe's belt, stars were closer together.
"The close proximity of the stars meant that they felt each others' gravity much more strongly in those early days than they do today," Fathi Namouni, lead author of the study and an astronomer at Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur in France, said in a statement. "This enabled asteroids to be pulled from one star system to another." (MORE)