Hubble view of the aftermath of an asteroid collision

[redqueen]

http://planetary.org/blog/article/00002330/

This photo is going to be one of the iconic space images of 2010: Hubble has caught an astonishing view of something that's never before been observed, the aftermath of a collision between two asteroids in the main belt.





Visit the Hubble site for the full story: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/07/full/

[damntexdem]

1. The insurance companies for those asteroids are going to want those pictures ...

for use in the inevitable litigation over the collision.

;-)

[Political Heretic]

2. Awesome.

[formercia]

3. A small Nuke would do the same

That would make quite the show as it entered Earth's atmosphere.

[Occulus]

4. Depends on the size of the fragments

It could make for considerably more than a mere show.

SyFy just aired a movie (Feb. 1, I think) about a disaster involving some body in the asteroid belt perturbing the orbit of Apophis and sending it on a collision course with Earth. I don't know if it was intended to be the asteroid Apophis, or if that was just what the fictional Earth dubbed the object on the collision course in the film.

At any rate, the scientist who was responsible for removing the threat was adamant to military personnel that trying to obliterate the object with a direct strike wjould be a very very bad idea because it would only fragment the thing, not vaporize it (as the military in the film fondly imagined it would). In the end, the missile was detonated near the asteroid and threw it off track enough to miss Earth entirely.

This is not a fictional scenario; Earth is in fact under threat from Apophis in (I think) both 2029 and 2036. It will be a very near thing, and some algorithms actually calculate a collision. How we will deal with this remains to be seen, but the closer we get to the date, the more accurate the calculations will be. It may miss us entirely, but be close enough to see with the naked eye even during the day.

Interesting times, to say the least.