Asteroids Belt
Overview
Asteroids are pulverized remnants of building blocks of a planet that failed to form because of the great gravitational influence of the massive planet Jupiter in the next door.
As you can see in the picture above, the location of the asteroid belt is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids in the main asteroid belt. According to the NASA, the known count is 1, 113,527.
Interesting Facts
- Most of the asteroids are non-spherical objects spinning with periods of a few hours. 1 Ceres is the biggest object in the asteroid belt. Now it is classified as a dwarf planet. Unlike other asteroids, 1 Ceres is round, and it is about 950 kilometers across.
- Size of other objects, in the asteroid belt, range from 530 kilometers in diameter (Asteroid Vesta) to 10 meters. The total mass of all the asteroids combined is less than our (Earth) moon’s mass.
- Since the asteroid belt is mostly empty space, collisions between asteroids are relatively rare over short timescales. Spacecrafts like Voyagers could fly through the asteroid belt without any issue.
- Meteoroids are mostly chips off asteroids. When a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it becomes meteor as it lights up due to its enormous speed and air resistance. What reaches the ground, after surviving the descent, is meteorite.
- Dinosaurs, which had dominated the Earth for over 160 million years, perished suddenly when an asteroid, about 10 kilometers in size, hit the Earth 65 million years ago. The aftermath of the impact was so enormous that most of the species of animals and vegetation became extinct. The impact site, known as Chicxulub crater, is on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Chicxulub crater is about 170 kilometers wide.
Sources:
- The Cambridge Guide to the Solar System by Kenneth R. Lang, Cambridge University Press.