Hole in Asteroid Belt Reveals Extinction Asteroid

eldavojohn writes "Further evidence for the asteroid mass extinction theory has been discovered as a break in the main asteroid belt of our solar system. From the article, "A joint U.S.-Czech team from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague suggests that the parent object of asteroid (298) Baptistina disrupted when it was hit by another large asteroid, creating numerous large fragments that would later create the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the prominent Tycho crater found on the Moon.""

Comments

Re:hmm

[skoaldipper]

Timing is everything, which is the main thrust of this article I gather, linking that event to interesting moon and earth geological formations during the same epoch.

But, if Chicxulub was the 8 ball, and Baptistina the combo shot, I was left wondering at the end of my reading, what was the cue ball, and where was the pool stick? Of more concern, when does the best 2 out of 3 match take place?

Re:No crap

[Arabani]

4. They predict an impact 160 million years ago, 95 million years off the mark. Example: Dino fossils are as new as 65 million. They believe that the BREAKUP occurred 160 million years ago, not whatever wiped out the dinosaurs. It takes time for things to move from the asteroid belt to the Earth, you know.

Gap in asteroid tracking data -- Earth at risk?

[abbamouse]

I wonder if this means that our current strategy of tracking asteroids to see if they will impact Earth is the wrong one. Perhaps no asteroids "naturally" hit Earth on their present trajectories. If it takes a collision within the asteroid belt to throw out material that impacts Earth, maybe we should be trying to track the movements of large asteroids to see if they will intersect EACH OTHER rather than Earth.

I may be misunderstanding the data, and I would never change policy based on a single study, but this suggests that a more sophisticated approach is needed to detect potential impactors.

Re:No crap

[Anonymous Coward]

2. The Sun is bigger than Earth, and therefore would probably get hit 1000% (or more) more often. Example: eclipses show this quite easily It would be extraordinarily hard for any object to hit the Sun. Only if an object was heading directly for the Sun as it entered the Solar System gravity well or if it originally had an extremely eccentric orbit would it be able to hit the Sun. This point may not be obvious to those who haven't studied physics, but the Solar System is a gravity well. If your goal is to hit the Sun (i.e. to touch the atmosphere where you will be aerodynamically decelerated/toasted), then you need to give up a lot of energy. Probes like MESSENGER that want to go into orbit around Mercury need to use more fuel than they would to escape the Solar System entirely.

From your point of view as a comet or other object in elliptical orbit around the Sun, if you wanted to actually collide with the Sun you would need to strike an object such that it sent you into an elliptical orbit with such a high eccentricity that your orbit passed through the atmosphere of the Sun. The probability of that happening is extremely remote. The probability of sending a collided object through the orbits of any of the planets is not.

For objects that are not orbiting the Sun when they are approaching (and can't be captured without a collision with a third body), your direction of approach has to be so finely positioned that those mythical sniper shots at 1 mile or more look trivial. In no case will the Sun's gravity make a collision more probable (or in the other case).

Re:No crap

[barakn]

Eclipses show this quite easily? What the heck is that supposed to mean? And pork chop plots show how much energy it will take for a spacecraft to escape Earth's gravity, place it on a course to another object, and capture it into orbit upon arrival as a function of different launch and arrival dates. They are most definitely not, as you seem to imply, some sort of error estimate for orbital trajectories. It's sad that you've decided to try to cast aspersions on research done by the Southwest Research Institute, as it is highly regarded in the field, and you don't seem to know what you're talking about.

Re:No crap

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>We can't predict movement 10 years from now

NASA does it all the time for deep space probes, Halley's Comet returns are predicted many orbits in advance, and in general celestial mechanics is one of the most exact predictive disciplines. Even tiny deviations, such as those of Mercury's orbit (56 arc seconds per year!), are considered grounds for revising theories of gravity.

Re:No crap

[1u3hr]

2. The Sun is bigger than Earth, and therefore would probably get hit 1000% (or more) more often. Example: eclipses show this quite easily

WTF does an eclipse show? I hope you're not talking about sunspots, which have nothing to do with asteroids. 4. They predict an impact 160 million years ago, 95 million years off the mark.

RTFA. There was a series of impacts over millenia, Yucatan being the biggest, but not the first. Many of the earth grazers we see now may have originated in the same event.

At least I haven't seen any Global Warming scarey articles in a while. Maybe the Firehose is working afterall?

It's not news when it's a known fact. Seeing as how you willfully misinterpreted this article, I'm not surprsed you remain confused about that too.

Re:No crap

[Goaway]

You have just accused an entire field of science of being nothing but liars.

Do you have the kind of evidence needed to back up a claim like that?