. 24/7 Space News .
Smash And Grab On The Edge Of Sol Billions Of Year Ago

This is an image of the satellite from the night of 30 June 2005. 2003 EL 61 is the bright object in the center and the satellite appears directly below about 0.5 arcseconds. To the south of 2003 EL61 you can also see a faint object which turns out to be a second satellite.
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (SPX) Mar 15, 2007
In the outer reaches of the solar system, there is an object known as 2003 EL61 that looks like and spins like a football being drop-kicked over the proverbial goalpost of life.

Still awaiting a more poetic name, 2003 EL61 largely escaped the media hubbub during last year's demotion of Pluto, but new findings could make it one of the most important of the Kuiper-belt objects for understanding the workings of the solar system.

In this week's Nature, the original discoverer of the body, Mike Brown, announces with his colleagues that an entire family of bodies seems to have originated from a catastrophic collision involving 2003 EL61 about the time Earth was forming.

Brown and his team base their assumptions on similar surface properties and orbital dynamics of smaller chunks still in the general vicinity.

They conclude that 2003 EL61 was spherical and nearly the size of Pluto until it was rammed by a slightly smaller body about 4.5 billion years ago, leaving behind the football-shaped body we see today and a couple of moons, as well as many more fragments that flew away entirely.

"Some of these chunks are still in orbit around the sun and very near the orbit of 2003 EL61 itself," says Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.

"The impact made a tremendous fireball, and large icy chunks of the big object split off and went flying into space, leaving behind a huge ice-covered rock spinning end over end every four hours.

"It spins so fast that it has pulled itself into the shape of an American football, but one that's a bit deflated and stepped on," Brown adds.

A significant part of the finding is that the collision occurred in a region of space where orbits are not very stable. "In most places, things go around the sun minding their own business for 4.5 billion years and nothing happens," says Brown.

"But in a few places, though, orbits go crazy and change and eventually objects can find themselves on a trajectory into the inner solar system, where they would be what we would then call comets."

As a consequence, many of the shards probably made their way to the inner solar system, and a few have undoubtedly hit Earth in the past. The study thus provides new ideas about how the solar system evolves, and how comets fit into the big picture.

Brown adds that 2003 EL61 will put on quite a show in about a billion years, if anyone is still around to enjoy it.

"It's a long time to wait, but 2003 EL61 could become by far the largest comet in eons," Brown says. "It will be something like 6,000 times brighter than Hale-Bopp a few years ago."

The other authors of the paper are Kristin Barkume, Darin Ragozzine, and Emily Schaller, all graduate students in planetary science at Caltech.

Email This Article

Related Links
Detailed information on EL61
Lost Among A Million Outer Planets



Memory Foam Mattress Review
Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News


Jupiter Play Back Begins As Downlink Initiated From New Horizons
Laurel MD (SPX) Mar 14, 2007
New Horizons is about 0.15 astronomical units from Jupiter now, and already 5.5 AU from the Sun! Our final imaging and spectroscopy observations of Jupiter system targets wrapped up last week.







  • The Story Of Women In Space
  • Russia To Shut Down Svobodny Space Centre
  • NASA To Host Space University Session
  • JAXA Hosts Kyoto Workshop For Global Space Exploration Strategy

  • NASA Mars Rover Churns Up Questions With Sulfur-Rich Soil
  • JPL Animators Create Detailed Fly Over Of Victoria Crater With Opportunity At Work
  • Onward To The Valley Without Peril
  • Early Mars Had Underground Water System

  • First Ariane 5 Launch Of 2007 Finally Gets Away
  • Official Opening Of The Soyuz Launch Base Construction Site In French Guiana
  • Canadian Satellite Given Final Checks At Russian Launch Pad
  • United Launch Alliance Successfully Launches First USAF Atlas 5

  • CryoSat-2 On The Road To Recovery
  • Climate Change View Clearer With New Oceans Satellite
  • Space Scientists To Take The Pulse Of Planet Earth
  • Satellite Scientists Set To Descend On Hobart

  • Smash And Grab On The Edge Of Sol Billions Of Year Ago
  • Jupiter Play Back Begins As Downlink Initiated From New Horizons
  • The Tip of the Iceberg
  • New Horizons Completes First Stage Of Long Journey To Pluto And Beyond

  • Science Team Shows Light Is Made Of Particles And Waves
  • Gamma-Ray Burst Challenges Theory
  • NASA Mission Finds Link Between Big And Small Stellar Blasts
  • Full-Spectrum Study Of Small Patch Of Sky Yields Portrait Of Maturing Universe

  • Shooting Marbles At Four Miles A Second
  • A SMART Bridge To The Future Exploration Of The Moon
  • First Chinese Lunar Probe Assembled And Ready For Launch
  • Chinese Spacemen To Reach Moon In 15 Years

  • New Receiver Board Gets All The Right Signals
  • Glonass Cheaper To Build Than GPS Says Putin
  • Raytheon To Pursue Air Force Upgrade For NextGen GPS Control Segment
  • Spirent Communications Announces Combined GPS Galileo Simulation System

  • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2006 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA PortalReports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additionalcopyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement