How scientists solved the strange case of the missing asteroids
A couple years ago, astronomers made a surprising discovery: A significant number of asteroids were missing from the central region of the solar system. See the most-read stories in Science this hour >> In a paper published Wednesday in Nature, the scientists say that the asteroids appear to be disintegrating when they get too close to the sun, leaving a trail of space rubble in their orbital wake. Most of the asteroids that wander into our part of the solar system come from the doughnut-shaped space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter known as the main asteroid belt. The new model did a great job of matching the data in almost all areas of the solar system except for in the part closest to the sun, said Robert Jedicke of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and an author on the paper. “What our data shows is there is a deficit of objects close to the sun, and the fact that we can see that deficit means they have to disappear quite rapidly.” The researchers add that the discovery could explain the origin of meteor showers that have no known parent object.
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