Examples of ensemble orbit distributions that could result from a large number of tidal disturbances of near-Earth objects with a < 2 au and an i < 25° during close encounters with Earth 10,000 years after the disturbance ( left) and when all test asteroids have reached a well. (RIGHT). The assumption here is that the fragments are ejected at negligibly slow velocities relative to the perturbing parent body, which is supported by numerical simulations of tidal disturbances (Schunov´a et al. 2014), so that only the evolutions orbitals of the parent bodies are taken into account. here. Credit: arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2312.08247
Two astronomers, one from the Asteroid Engineering Laboratory at Luleå University of Technology, Finland, and the other from the Southwest Research Institute, in the United States, have discovered, via computer simulation, that some large asteroids that approach Earth can be torn apart by its gravity. Mikael Granvik and Kevin Walsh published their article on the arXiv preprint server – it should be published soon in Letters from the astrophysical journal.
In recent years, space scientists have noticed that many asteroids are close to colliding with Earth, but very few actually succeed. This has led some experts in the field to suggest that the reason for this difference lies in the effect of Earth’s gravity on approaching asteroids. Due to a stronger pull on the side of an asteroid closer to Earth, it could be separated, reducing it to a stream of much smaller asteroids. Intrigued by this idea, Granvik and Walsh looked for a way to test this possibility.
Their work began a decade ago, when they began studying asteroid data looking for evidence of an asteroid that might have been destroyed by Earth’s gravity. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find any, they probably thought, due to the resulting flow of small asteroids mixing with other small asteroids. This led them to build a model that could be used to calculate the trajectories of asteroids of different sizes and then estimate their numbers at different distances from Earth.
They then compared what their model showed with real data and found that the estimates calculated by their model were much lower. Thinking the difference might be due to asteroids that had been torn apart, they created a simulation to adjust the number of asteroids to include those altered by gravity.
They found that their model simulated the actual number of small asteroids observed and counted, suggesting that it was able to simulate the likelihood of larger asteroids being torn apart as they move near or toward Earth. The gravity of an M-type planet, like Earth, can remove 50-90% of the mass of an asteroid when it encounters it.
More information:
Mikael Granvik et al, Tidal disruption of near-Earth asteroids during close encounters with terrestrial planets, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2312.08247
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