Questions tagged [asteroid-belt]

Questions about the large ring of rocky bodies between Mars and Jupiter.

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8 votes
1 answer
169 views

Does Mars get hit by as many meteors as the Earth?

The Moon gets bombarded by meteors at the same rate as the Earth according to What the moon's craters reveal about earth's history Does Mars or any other planet get bombarded at the same rate as the ...
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7 votes
2 answers
117 views

How much cosmic dust is there in the asteroid belt?

I've tried looking on google but I've found nothing that directly answers my question. I've found that around Earth there is around 1000 grains in every cubic kilometre, but I'd assume that there is ...
3 votes
0 answers
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At which point does the inner solar system end and the outer solar system start [duplicate]

I've heard how the inner solar system ends at the asteroid belt but where in the asteroid belt?The start?The middle?The end?Is there an exact distance that is put in place?
8 votes
2 answers
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Can we estimate the orbital period of the planet Phaeton (destroyed planet between Mars and Jupiter)?

Phaeton was a planet hypothesized to have existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the destruction of which supposedly led to the formation of the asteroid belt. Can we measure its orbital ...
3 votes
1 answer
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Why haven't we had an "asteroid attack" until now?

We know that there is a big and dense ring of asteroids between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars and also "Trojans" and "Greeks" in Jupiter's orbit too. We also know that there are ...
1 vote
0 answers
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Is the asteroid belt made up of Mercury's former crust?

Mercury has an unusual composition: It seems to consist mostly of metal, which is otherwise common in the cores of planets. Also, Mercury's rocks are rich in volatile materials, which could not have ...
1 vote
0 answers
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What's the largest object crossing Ceres' hill sphere?

What's the largest and/or most massive main belt object whose Ceres MOID is within Ceres' hill sphere radius (within ~0.0015 a.u. (140,000 mi) (224,000 km))? Three-dimensionally, of course.
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2 votes
0 answers
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Why do the asteroids orbit the Sun in roughly the same plane as the planets?

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is an extremely active environment (on an astronomical time scale) where collisions between 10km radius bodies occur every $10^7$ years, according to ...
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1 vote
2 answers
181 views

How has the average distance between asteroids in the asteroid belt changed over time?

Just about every webpage related to asteroids states that, on average, asteroids are about 600,000 miles apart from one another. Have planetary scientists hazarded a guess at how close they might ...
2 votes
0 answers
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Can telescopes determine whether Hygiea is in hydrostatic equilibrium?

10 Hygiea is a spherical body in the main asteroid belt. With future telescopes like the Vera Rubin LSST or the James Webb Space Telescope, can we determine whether Hygiea is actually in hydrostatic ...
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3 votes
1 answer
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Temporary family member 2020-CD3

So, recently I came to know that this asteroid is orbiting Earth from past 3 years and still it is orbiting. It is kind of a mini Moon to the Earth know to have come from asteroid-belt. Is there ...
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1 vote
1 answer
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Are there celestial bodies that are about as far away as the Sun?

Just curious. The Sun is 500 light seconds away from the Earth depending on time of the year. The orbit of Mars is about 50% as far as the Sun, the orbit of Vesta about 150%. Is there / Are there ...
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7 votes
1 answer
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How much rock has Jupiter "swallowed"?

During its formation approximately 4.5 bya, Jupiter passed through what is now the asteroid belt,gravitationally deflecting some spacewards and some sunwards. Logically, Jupiter, due to its massive ...
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62 votes
1 answer
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Why is the asteroid belt shaped like a triangle?

So, in this question, the user JollyJoker posted this image depicting the orbits of the asteroids in the asteroid field in the comments: [ In this image, you can see that while the individual ...
19 votes
1 answer
9k views

Why isn't the asteroid belt affected by Jupiter's gravitational field?

Jupiter's mass is just about a 1000th of the sun's and the asteroid belt is slightly closer to Jupiter than it is to the sun. If the heavier the object, the more curvy space is around it, why isn't ...
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0 votes
1 answer
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What resources do C-Type(Carbonaceous) Asteroids contain?

What resources do C-Type asteroids contain? The research I've done has come up with carbon, but what form is the carbon in? Graphite, diamonds, coal, or some other material?
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3 votes
1 answer
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How long does it take for an asteroid to get to Earth?

How long does it take an asteroid to get from the asteroid belt, to Earth? I know the asteroids don't go directly from the asteroid belt to Earth, but I know it's not quick, either. The time probably ...
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8 votes
2 answers
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What if there was an asteroid belt with the mass of a planet?

In the past, the asteroid belt was thought to be the remains of a shattered planet. Of course, that was all pseudoscience, the mass of the asteroid belt being 4% of the moon. I've been wondering, what ...
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1 vote
1 answer
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What was the composition of the primordial asteroid belt?

According to one theory, the region between Mars and Jupiter was once populated by several primordial planets with a combined mass of roughly the earth. These planets provided the material that made ...
3 votes
1 answer
238 views

Which is the farthest distance a particular distant known- identified object from the asteroid belt can get from the sun?

According to Space facts The Asteroid Belt is located in an area of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. That places it between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun But ...
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2 votes
2 answers
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What size objects can be created from collision of two asteroids? [closed]

Does collision of two asteroids necessarily create only very small objects? (and how big is it "very small"?) I am especially interested about collision of two asteroids with similar orbits (and thus ...
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-6 votes
1 answer
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What is the significance of the asteroid belt? [closed]

This may seem like a trivia question or a question for skeptics, but I really would like to know, what is the significance of the asteroid belt? The only reason I've seen from my research is "because ...
5 votes
1 answer
445 views

Planetary orbital resonances

The Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt are associated with orbital resonances with Jupiter yet planets seem to prefer resonant locations. Why don't asteroids accumulate near the "Kirkwood ...
6 votes
1 answer
279 views

Is Ceres in the inner solar system or outer solar system?

Do we consider the dwarf planet Ceres to be in the inner solar system or outer solar system (or possibly neither / in between). It is located within the asteroid belt, but is the asteroid belt part ...
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4 votes
1 answer
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Is Ceres a terrestrial-type (dwarf) planet?

Does Ceres belong to the terrestrial-type celestial bodies?
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21 votes
6 answers
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How big would the asteroid belt planet be?

As I understand it, the asteroid belt exists because the gravitational force of Jupiter prevents the asteroids from accreting (is that a word?) into a planet. If, however, Jupiter didn't exist and ...
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9 votes
1 answer
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Can the asteroid belt be seen from Jupiter?

Suppose that someone lives in the neighborhood of Jupiter. He may live in a space station around Jupiter, or in any ot it's moons (I believe that it doesn't matter for this question). If this person ...
6 votes
2 answers
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Connection between Earth, Moon, Theia, and asteroid belt?

Are there other fragments aside from the Moon that resulted from the collision of Earth and "Theia" (as it's called in recent main-stream press stories)? And if not, why not? And what ...
1 vote
2 answers
399 views

Will a new planet form if Jupiter's influence on asteroid belt will diminish in a few billion years?

I know that tidal forces are pushing Jupiter farther from the Sun, but I couldn't find exactly the yearly amount. In a few billion years would this effect (and subsequent decrease in gravity pull) ...
11 votes
1 answer
631 views

Why haven't asteroid belts turned into new large bodies?

If gravitation (attraction of mass) is the cause of the formation of all celestial bodies then how come the numerous small bodies found in asteroid belts spread over an orbit instead of clustering ...
9 votes
1 answer
208 views

What was the greatest spatial extent of the Asteroid Belt prior to the Late Heavy Bombardment?

Reading the article On the asteroid belt’s orbital and size distribution (Gladman et al. 2009), there is an interest point made: asteroids a few kilometers and smaller in size are recent ...
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