Yarkovsky Effect On Asteroid Detected

Henry writes "New Scientist is reporting that a JPL team has measured the recoil effect of an asteroid caused by the Sun in the process of re-emission of absorbed sunlight as heat. Astronomers believe this phenomenon, known as the Yarkovsky Effect, has brought asteroids - which are otherwise mainly located in and near the belt - towards Earth. This effect on asteroids was previously predicted, but this is the first proof."

Comments

This is amazing work

[shweazel]

These guys collected 12 years worth of data, to finally determine that an asteroid 16 million kilometers from the earth was 15 kilometers further away than calculated by the influence of gravity alone.

No wonder noone else was able to measure this till now..

Impressive

[szyzyg]

But it just makes all those long term asteroid orbit simulations a little harder now, since not only do you have to know the position and velocity accurately, you now have to know it's spin and it's thermal properties. It's a great example of how orbital mechanics can be considered chaotic on reasonable timescales.

Oh since I'm here - Oblibatory link to my map of the solar system showing all the near earth asteroids.....

http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/

From the Oval Office

[borroff]

The White House's immediate reaction was to try to control the spin, thereby eliminating any deviation from the status quo.

Good question

[Tau Zero]

There probably is, because Earth is definitely warmer around sunset than around sunrise. This would mean greater IR emissions in the direction opposite the orbital motion, causing thrust in the direction of the orbit.

However, the Yarkovsky effect on Earth is going to be much smaller (probably unmeasurably small) than on a sub-kilometer asteroid for these reasons:

1. Earth's atmosphere and oceans buffer the temperature changes, leading to less variation in IR emissions per rotation and thus less net thrust.
2. While the net IR emission is proportional to the intercepted sunlight and thus the area of Earth's disc (proportional to radius squared), the acceleration is inversely proportional to the mass (which is proportional to radius cubed). On top of this, Earth is denser than typical asteroidal rocks, due to its iron core and compression of lower layers to denser mineral forms.

It would be interesting to calculate the likely influence of the Yarkovsky effect on Earth, as a high-school physics exercise (like calculating the De Broglie wavelength of a moving car). I suggest this exercise to you, for fun; if nothing else, it will give you an idea of how hard it is likely to be to measure it.