{"id":9369,"date":"2014-03-09T11:34:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T18:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/?p=9369"},"modified":"2021-01-18T01:34:57","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T09:34:57","slug":"research-team-discovers-slowly-disintegrating-asteroid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/?p=9369","title":{"rendered":"Research team discovers slowly disintegrating asteroid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/disintegrating-asteroid.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9371 alignleft\" alt=\"disintegrating-asteroid\" src=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/disintegrating-asteroid.png\" width=\"289\" height=\"361\" srcset=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/disintegrating-asteroid.png 421w, http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/disintegrating-asteroid-240x300.png 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 289px) 100vw, 289px\" \/><\/a>A research team led by iPLEX Director Dave Jewitt has discovered an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter that appears to be slowly breaking apart.\u00a0 In the original lower-resolution images taken, asteroid P\/2013 R3 appeared strangely fuzzy.\u00a0 A closer inspection with the W.M. Keck observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the asteroid was in fact composed of several fragments moving away from each other at a rate of 1 mile per hour.\u00a0 These fragments are surrounded by a cloud of dust the size of Earth, with the largest pieces about twice the size of a football field.<\/p>\n<p>The slow disintegration of P\/2013 R3 is unusual.\u00a0 When asteroids collide or experience a high velocity impact, they break up quickly rather than hovering in a slowly expanding cloud of debris.\u00a0 Likewise, the asteroid is not located near a large planet whose gravitational field could rip it apart and P\/2013 R3 is positioned far from the Sun whose heat could cause gases to expand and crack the asteroid apart.\u00a0 The cause of the unlikely disintegration, according to Prof. Jewitt and his team, are low energy photons emitted from the surface of the asteroid.\u00a0 These photons are singly not very energetic, but over the course of millions of years they can spin the asteroid at faster and faster rates.\u00a0 If the asteroid is held together loosely, a type of asteroid known as a &#8220;rubble pile&#8221;, it can start spinning so fast that its component parts separate, creating a slow moving cloud of debris as observed with P\/2013 R3.<\/p>\n<p>To read more about this discovery, check out a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science\/sciencenow\/la-sci-sn-mysterious-disintegrating-asteroid-20140305,0,1318545.story#axzz2vDPiLQed\">Los Angeles Times article<\/a>.\u00a0 For more information, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ess.ucla.edu\/~jewitt\/P2013R3.html\">Dave Jewitt&#8217;s website<\/a> or read their <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ess.ucla.edu\/~jewitt\/papers\/2014\/JAL14.pdf\">Astrophysical Journal paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A research team led by iPLEX Director Dave Jewitt has discovered an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter that appears to be slowly breaking apart.\u00a0 In the original lower-resolution images taken, asteroid P\/2013 R3 appeared strangely fuzzy.\u00a0 A closer inspection with the W.M. Keck observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the asteroid was in fact &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/?p=9369\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Research team discovers slowly disintegrating asteroid&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296,32],"tags":[366,401],"class_list":["post-9369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","tag-asteroid","tag-jewitt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9373,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9369\/revisions\/9373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/planets.ucla.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}