Nachash

A mysterious X-shaped pattern of space debris seen by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was probably two asteroids that collided, scientists said Tuesday.

The object, called P/2010 A2, was discovered in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research sky survey, or LINEAR, on January 6, NASA said.

The shape, and the streamers of dust shooting off of it, were photographed by Hubble on January 25 and 29, according to NASA.

Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down because of collisions, but such a head-on crash had never been seen before.

“If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight,” said principal investigator David Jewitt, from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 6:44 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.