A fragment of our moon may be orbiting the sun with Earth
Kamo‘oalewa, an item that orbits the sun alongside with Earth, is unexpectedly purple, foremost scientists to suspect it arrived from the moon
House
11 November 2021
A little piece of the moon might be orbiting the sunlight together with Earth. This object, named Kamo‘oalewa, has an sudden composition that hints it may have been chipped off the moon and tossed into orbit.
Quasi-satellites like Kamo‘oalewa – of which Earth has five – travel along with a earth in similar orbits all around the sunlight. Benjamin Sharkey and Vishnu Reddy at the College of Arizona led a crew that used the Significant Binocular Telescope and the Lowell Discovery Telescope, each in Arizona, to take a look at the spectrum of the gentle bouncing off Kamo‘oalewa.
Their observations confirmed that it was unexpectedly pink. “It does not look like what we would have envisioned if it was just a ‘regular’ asteroid,” claims Sharkey. “We seemed at practically 2000 spectra of other close to-Earth asteroids, and none of them matched.”
They also compared their observations to information of various other kinds of asteroids that can be unexpectedly crimson, which includes all those with a significant metal articles and those protected in small grains of dust, but none of them matched. The only shut match that the researchers observed was with a sample of moon rock brought again by the Apollo missions, hinting that Kamo‘oalewa may have been thrown from the moon in an effects.
“It’s a sort of lacking piece of the puzzle,” suggests Reddy. “We have meteorites on the Earth, we have holes on the moon exactly where some of individuals rocks arrived from, and this could be the piece in concerning.”
Pinpointing how very long it is been travelling with Earth is a extra tough query. “We imagine it arrived off the moon. The composition appears to be to match, but finding out when it arrived off the moon or exactly where on the moon it came off of is a tall order,” states Reddy. “The only way to do that would be to get a sample back again.” The Chinese area company is currently building this kind of a mission, referred to as ZhengHe, prepared to launch in the mid-2020s.
Journal reference: Communications Earth & Setting, DOI: 10.1038/s43247-021-00303-7
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Kamo‘oalewa, an item that orbits the sun alongside with Earth, is unexpectedly purple, foremost scientists to suspect it arrived from the moon
House
11 November 2021
A little piece of the moon might be orbiting the sunlight together with Earth. This object, named Kamo‘oalewa, has an sudden composition that hints it may have been chipped off the moon and tossed into orbit.
Quasi-satellites like Kamo‘oalewa – of which Earth has five – travel along with a earth in similar orbits all around the sunlight. Benjamin Sharkey and Vishnu Reddy at the College of Arizona led a crew that used the Significant Binocular Telescope and the Lowell Discovery Telescope, each in Arizona, to take a look at the spectrum of the gentle bouncing off Kamo‘oalewa.
Their observations confirmed that it was unexpectedly pink. “It does not look like what we would have envisioned if it was just a ‘regular’ asteroid,” claims Sharkey. “We seemed at practically 2000 spectra of other close to-Earth asteroids, and none of them matched.”
They also compared their observations to information of various other kinds of asteroids that can be unexpectedly crimson, which includes all those with a significant metal articles and those protected in small grains of dust, but none of them matched. The only shut match that the researchers observed was with a sample of moon rock brought again by the Apollo missions, hinting that Kamo‘oalewa may have been thrown from the moon in an effects.
“It’s a sort of lacking piece of the puzzle,” suggests Reddy. “We have meteorites on the Earth, we have holes on the moon exactly where some of individuals rocks arrived from, and this could be the piece in concerning.”
Pinpointing how very long it is been travelling with Earth is a extra tough query. “We imagine it arrived off the moon. The composition appears to be to match, but finding out when it arrived off the moon or exactly where on the moon it came off of is a tall order,” states Reddy. “The only way to do that would be to get a sample back again.” The Chinese area company is currently building this kind of a mission, referred to as ZhengHe, prepared to launch in the mid-2020s.
Journal reference: Communications Earth & Setting, DOI: 10.1038/s43247-021-00303-7
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