Where Do Asteroids Come From?

Have you ever considered where do asteroidscome from? Around the Earth, there are numerous asteroids, like the planets,orbiting the Sun. In the process, these asteroids are inevitably disturbed byvarious external gravitational forces and thus have the chance to deviate fromtheir original orbits, thus posing a potential threat to the safety of the Earth.

Scientists study where do asteroids comefrom. For example, 65 million years ago, an asteroid with a diameter of 10 kmstruck the Earth, causing the mass extinction of many organisms, includingdinosaurs. Although the chances of such a huge meteorite falling to Earth arevery small, asteroids of smaller mass and size fall to Earth almost every day.

According to statistics, the total weightof asteroids falling on Earth is about 1 ton per day, only the vast majority ofthem are very small. We sometimes learn from the news that another fallingmeteorite has been found somewhere, but almost all of these meteorites fall inthe middle of nowhere, and rarely fall into residential areas. Some people saythat this is an advanced alien civilization protecting mankind at all times, isthis really true?

The origin of asteroids

More than 90% of the asteroids that "visit" Earth come from the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars inthe solar system. The number of asteroids in this region reaches a staggering500,000 or more, most of them are very small, and the largest one found so faris Ceres, with a diameter of about 1000 km. Scientists explore where doasteroids come from.

As for the formation of the asteroid belt,the prevailing view in the scientific community is the "planetarysemifinished" theory, which says that originally this area, like otherplanets at the beginning of their birth, was originally developed toward thepath of interstellar material gathering into planets, except that Jupiter, aplanetary "giant", was formed near this area first. Not onlyabsorbed most of the interstellar material, but also made this region formorbital resonance phenomenon, increasing the chance of those aggregatedmaterial collide with each other, can not form a larger mass of planets, onlyin the form of universal fragments.

The remaining 10% of the asteroids that hitthe Earth originate from the Kuiper Belt in the outer part of the solar system,where the number of asteroids is predicted to be at least one million, and mostof them are small in mass and volume. In addition to the many rockyasteroids, there are also a large number of small objects made of icy material.

As for the formation of Kuiper Beltobjects, the mainstream scientific opinion is that the combination of theoutward shift of Neptune's orbit and the resonance of Jupiter and Saturn'sorbits made the orbits of the objects here appear to be "chaotic",and the interstellar materials that could not be easily blown by the solar windand were not "intercepted" by other planets, were not"intercepted" by other planets. The interstellar materials that werenot easily blown by the solar wind and not "intercepted" by otherplanets also collided violently here, forming numerous small solid objects andcomet nuclei with ice crystals as their cores, thus becoming the birthplace ofcomets in the solar system.

Who is protecting the human race?

So, where do asteroids come from? Theasteroids in these two regions, in addition to the strong gravitational effectof the Sun, orbiting the Sun periodically, are also vulnerable to thegravitational interference of the surrounding massive planets due to theirsmall mass and large number, which makes their orbits shift at certain momentsand certain spatial positions on the one hand, and drives the collision betweenthe asteroids on the other, after which the original asteroids After thecollision, many of the original asteroids break up into more and smallerpieces, and their orbits will change significantly, with some of them movingtoward the inner part of the solar system, getting closer and closer to the Earth, and when they reach a certain distance limit, they will shift toward the Earth and eventually fall into the Earth's atmosphere under the effect of the Earth's gravity.

The number of these asteroids runningtoward the Earth is much more than the final fall to the Earth's surface, thereason for this is that the Earth is protected by the atmosphere. It isestimated that the total amount of interstellar material (including asteroids)entering the Earth's atmosphere will reach more than 100 tons per day.

The speed of these materials entering theatmosphere is very high, and the relative speed to the Earth can reach tens ofthousands or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour. As the fallprocess continues, the gas density of the atmosphere gradually increases, thefriction between the asteroids and atmospheric molecules continues tointensify, on the one hand, the formation of high temperature, so that gasionization, the asteroid surface temperature also increased sharply andvaporization; on the other hand, under the influence of strong air excitation,the asteroids at both ends of the pressure imbalance, many asteroids in theprocess of falling cracking, the smaller completely vaporized away Only thosewith larger masses and very dense structures can persist to the end, formingmeteorites that fall to the ground.