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Half a dozen lunar fragments can at any time in a short orbit land before going to Rsewing the Sun, new research shows, but they force them to notice them in a small size and fast pace.
When things come across the moon, they send a shower of material, some of them are able to escape into space. Although there may occasionally be a large piece, most of them are fast moving and less than 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter. Most of the lunar material enters the orbit around the gravitational attractive sun. However, some garbage can occasionally be taken to orbit around the Earth before returning to the sun, the investigators explained in a study published in Icarus.
It’s like “like a square dance where partners are changing regularly and sometimes leave the dance floor for a while,” Robert Jedicke, Hawaiian University and the main author of the study, told Space.com.
A piece of moon
Although the International Astronomical Union has no formal definition, previous studies show that minonon may be an object, at least temporarily bound to Earth, causes at least one planet’s revolution and is closer than about four times the Earth’s monthly distance at some point in its orbit.
Minions may come from any solar system anywhere, but in 2018 The study suggested most of the asteroid band, between Mars and Jupiter’s orbit. However, the recently released mention from the moon calls that conclusion.
2016 The Pan-Starrs1 asteroid study telescope in Hawaii noted 131 to 328 feet wide (40-100 meters) of the nearby land object set as Kamo’oalewa, or “469219 Kamo’oalewa” flying SINC with Sync with Sync. Subsequent research revealed that Kamo’oalewa was a piece of moon excavated 1 million to 10 million years ago in an accident that formed Giordan Bruno Crater.
Earlier this year, astronomers announced that the second temporary land satellite seems to have the origin of the moon. The object called 2024 PT5, found last year, looks more like a moon than an asteroid.
At the same time, these two objects suggest that the moon can give birth to its tiny moons. So Jedick and his colleagues decided to calculate how many moon’s minions could exist. Based on modeling of how they can behave from the moon -blown particles, they found that many particles in space could be at least temporarily recorded on Earth, and about one fifth of them were likely to be a minor.
Earth’s illustration with two moons, one is a mini moon. | Credit: Grebenkov through Wikimedia Commons
New conclusions are nominally predicted that 6.5 lunar -born satellites can be Earth at a time. Individual objects are replaced; If they could be counted today and then again a year, some would be new objects. In Jediche, the typical minion dancing around the Earth on average for about nine months, and these minions are constantly supplemented by material traveling to Earth -like orbit.
But when it comes to gluing the expected number of mentioned, Jediche warned that uncertainty is “huge – many size”. This is due to many unknown persons, including the size and speed distribution of the crater resulting from the impact, the size and speed distribution.
“If there were so much [temporarily bound objects]Telescopic studies would probably be detected more of them, said Jediche. – So the nominal forecast is almost certainly wrong. It’s science. “
As science is based on new information, more identification of the moon and better understanding of their size distribution will help improve that forecast and give a new insight into the crater formation process.
Small things, big challenges
Due to their size, tiny, temporary moles are the challenges noticed. The problem is related to both their size and speed. Because most fragments range from 3 to 7 feet (1 to 2 m) in diameter, even the most experienced instruments can try to detect them. Jedick compares them to a car or an SUV.
“The detection of objects of this size means that they must be close, so they are bright, but if they are close, it means that they are also moving through the sky as well,” Jediche said. “It is incredible that modern telescopic research has the ability to detect such small objects up to millions of kilometers.”
In massive sky studies, computers usually try to pull out motion. When minus is close enough to see, their quick movement can leave the celestial images, not stains. “The paths are heavier to determine the computer algorithms,” said Jedicke.
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But everything is not lost. New studies show that in 2020 The CD3 was visible to the Catalina Sky survey of only two of about 1,000 nights in the range. Successful detection is well monitored in the future. Once the objects are identified, observation becomes easier because astronomers know where and when to look for minions.
These short visitors could also have intriguing commercial programs as they will need the least amount of fuel they need to visit, said Jediche. Instead of flying to an asteroid belt to extract water, minerals and other commercially desirable elements, companies could find ways to capture transitions because they are briefly orbit on Earth.
From a scientific perspective, minnes and their relatives “can help reveal how the solar system continues to develop and continue to develop,” said Jediche. Understanding how the moon’s debris has been removed from the moon through the impact can help investigators better understand and evaluate the damage due to the effects of asteroids on Earth.