A pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun formed less than 300 years ago, a new study has revealed.
grew from accumulating clumps of such bodies. That makes asteroids scientifically interesting objects; not only do they contain information about the composition of the early Solar System, they might be the building blocks from which our very world formed.
It wasn't long before the two stood out; they had an elliptical orbit that was unusual compared to other asteroids that fly close to Earth on their path around the Sun.are not unheard of. But the mechanisms of binary asteroid formation are not well understood, so scientists conducted follow-up observations to try to learn more. They used several different telescopes to take images of the pair, and studied the faintly reflected sunlight bouncing off their surfaces.
"It is clear that 2019 PR2 and 2019 QR6 come from the same parent object and their high orbital similarity is not coincidental,"To trace the origin of the objects, the researchers combined observations with modelling. These revealed that the pair separated from a larger parent body just 270 years ago.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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