Asteroid Mysteriously Crumbles Before Our Eyes

The Hubble Space Telescope spied an asteroid breaking up into as many as 10 smaller pieces — a phenomenon that scientists have never seen before.

While we’ve seen more fragile comet nuclei disintegrate as they approached our Sun — the massive comet ISON famously broke apart near the Sun last year and was seen again in pieces shortly after — scientists haven’t ever observed a breakup like this in an asteroid.

“This is a really bizarre thing to observe — we’ve never seen anything like it before,” says Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany. “The break-up could have many different causes, but the Hubble observations are detailed enough that we can actually pinpoint the process responsible.” Read more…

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