I mean, don’t we know where all asteroids come from?
Destination_Centauri on
Wow, this article by someone named Mark Kaufman, is just so, so… BADLY written!?
How so? Well, the first statement of where the asteroid came from, according to this article is:
—————————————-
“The outskirts of the solar system!”
Ok, so like the Oort cloud!? Right?
No? Ok… well the Oort cloud is the outskirts. But sure… Maybe author Mark Kaufman meant the Keiper Belt perhaps?
But no! Not even that! Much, much closer!
—————————————-
In the end, the article then goes on to describe the “outskirts of the solar system” as the outer portion of the asteroid belt.
Like… What?!
Nobody, and no scientist I know would ever describe the outer portion of the asteroid belt as, “The Outskirts of our Solar System!”
If anything, that region is still the inner border of the inner-mini-skirt area of the solar system!
—————————————-
In short:
The meteor that killed the dinosaurs came from our INNER region of the solar system.
It came from the asteroid belt!
Right next to us!
Sure it may have come from the more outer boundary of that inner region… But it was no where anywhere close to coming from the actual “outskirts” of our solar system, by most modern definitions.
Wowza that’s bad reporting even by science reporting standards.
What they’re *trying* to say is that the astroid had been in a Centaur orbit and, due to the ruthenium detection, originated beyond the orbit of Juipter in the outer solar system. These orbits are unstable with respect to perturbations from one or more of the giant planets.
They also really need to stop calling it “giant” or “behemoth”. 10 km is pretty ordinary for an asteroid. A 10 km asteroid being called “giant” is like taking a Jack Russell and calling it a “giant mammal”.
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SPAAAAAAACE!!!!
(In little yellow eyed robot voice)
I mean, don’t we know where all asteroids come from?
Wow, this article by someone named Mark Kaufman, is just so, so… BADLY written!?
How so? Well, the first statement of where the asteroid came from, according to this article is:
—————————————-
“The outskirts of the solar system!”
Ok, so like the Oort cloud!? Right?
No? Ok… well the Oort cloud is the outskirts. But sure… Maybe author Mark Kaufman meant the Keiper Belt perhaps?
But no! Not even that! Much, much closer!
—————————————-
In the end, the article then goes on to describe the “outskirts of the solar system” as the outer portion of the asteroid belt.
Like… What?!
Nobody, and no scientist I know would ever describe the outer portion of the asteroid belt as, “The Outskirts of our Solar System!”
If anything, that region is still the inner border of the inner-mini-skirt area of the solar system!
—————————————-
In short:
The meteor that killed the dinosaurs came from our INNER region of the solar system.
It came from the asteroid belt!
Right next to us!
Sure it may have come from the more outer boundary of that inner region… But it was no where anywhere close to coming from the actual “outskirts” of our solar system, by most modern definitions.
Umm, didn’t we already know it came from the [Klendathu](https://starshiptroopers.fandom.com/wiki/Klendathu) system?
Wowza that’s bad reporting even by science reporting standards.
What they’re *trying* to say is that the astroid had been in a Centaur orbit and, due to the ruthenium detection, originated beyond the orbit of Juipter in the outer solar system. These orbits are unstable with respect to perturbations from one or more of the giant planets.
They also really need to stop calling it “giant” or “behemoth”. 10 km is pretty ordinary for an asteroid. A 10 km asteroid being called “giant” is like taking a Jack Russell and calling it a “giant mammal”.
Anyone got a TL;DR? Was it Space by any chance?