Bizarre Asteroid Collision is One For The X-Files

Bizarre Asteroid Collision is One For The X-Files

news.discovery.com

’ve seen thousands of astronomical images over my career, but this is one of the few absolute jaw-droppers: A flying X-pattern with trailing streamers.

At first glance it looks like a four-pointed Kohga Ninja throwing star blade.

It’s so weird-looking that you want to call the UFO hotline. Maybe it’s a Romulan “Bird of Prey” starship decloaking as it enters our solar system.

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Image from Hubble:


A close up

The mystery object, located 100 million miles from Earth, may really be the aftermath of a hypervelocity collision between two asteroids – like a bullet hitting another bullet. Whatever it is, nothing quite like it has ever before been seen in the heavens.

The comet-like object, called P/2010 A2, was first discovered by the LINEAR (Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program) sky survey on January 6. Telescopes around the world turned their attention to it.

Some hints in the following paragraph:

The scenario being pondered is that two uncharted asteroids ran into each other at speeds of over 11,000 miles per hour (or five times faster than a rifle bullet). The center of the “X” might be the original collision point where the trajectories of the object intersected. The whole structure has a definite ballistic look to it, like plummeting smoke trails from an exploded aerial firework. (Government conspiracy buffs might imagine it’s the result of an “anti-asteroid” interceptor being dispatched in a secret military experiment.)

This smashup created a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight. The main nucleus of P/2010 A2, which mysteriously lies outside of its own halo of dust, is the surviving remnant. It looks like the other body presumably disintegrated. There are two predominant streamers of dust in the Hubble image that are telltale evidence for two objects trailing dust.

The asteroid belt contains abundant evidence for ancient collisions that have shattered precursor bodies into fragments. The orbit of P/2010 A2 is itself consistent with membership in the Flora asteroid family, produced by collisional shattering of a pair of wayward asteroids over 100 million years ago. One fragment of that smashup may have struck Earth 65 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

With 2012 doomsday hysteria building, this might get attention on the Internet as yet another omen of the “End of Times.” Those who've overdosed on Nostradamus might see a flying Star of David, or a pentagram.

This comet was actually first noted on Jan 6, 2010 in the asteroid belt. It looked like a comet, but its strange circular orbit around the sun suggested it must be a very rare asteroid/comet hybrid.

There was another theory however, it could be the first ever observed hyper-velocity asteroid impact, and the comet-like tail was actually the debris produced after the violent cosmic encounter.

The image is simply goofy!!

news.discovery.com
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A discussion is currently going on here: (www.abovetopsecret.com...)

Though it may not have shown up in search because it's labeled as UFO.

reply to post by Gigantea Rosa


Ahh..dang, I did searched it before posting with asteroid. Thanx for the link though.

Existing thread here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Please add further comments to the ongoing discussion.
Thank you







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