https://www.sciencealert.com/we-ve-just-found-a-pair-of-asteroids-that-only-formed-300-years-ago

Astronomers Spot The Youngest Pair of Asteroids Ever Discovered in The Solar System:

MICHELLE STARR : 7 FEBRUARY 2022

A pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun formed less than 300 years ago, a new study has revealed.

This makes them the youngest pair of asteroids ever discovered in the Solar System, by a factor of 10. The discovery could tell us more about how asteroids crumble, while raising some intriguing new questions.

"It's very exciting to find such a young asteroid pair that was formed only about 300 years ago, which was like this morning – not even yesterday – in astronomical timescales," says astronomer Petr Fatka of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Czechia.

When the Solar System formed out of a dense clump in a giant cloud of gas and dust, whatever didn't get incorporated into planets or the Sun ended up simply floating around as debris: comets, asteroids, all that crunchy stuff.

more at link................

 

the paper:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01681.pdf

Recent formation and likely cometary activity of near-Earth asteroid pair 2019 PR2 – 2019 QR6:

 

 

 

Congratulations! It's a bouncing baby asteroid!

Wait... wait... it's twins!

Well, kinda.

The orbit of the asteroid 2019 QR6 (white ellipse) and its location in February 2022. The orbit and position of another asteroid, 2019 PR2, are nearly identical and would overlap perfectly on this scale. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/bad-astronomy-asteroids-2019-pr2-qr6-single-rock-splitting

Edited February 17, 20223 yr by beecee