Largest Asteroid Planet’s Prototype – The largest asteroid in the Milky Way is actually a planet prototype, a block that is being developed into a larger real planet, according to a study.
Some researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), making conclusions after using the Hubble Space Telescope to study the Pallas, the second largest asteroid in the Milky Way system, according to the study, published in the journal “Science”.
Pallas, name taken from the Greek goddess, Pallas Athena, was in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.
According to the theory of planet formation, planets prototype is a gas particle cloud, rock and dust that are in the process of planet formation. Planet prototype rather be on others orbit track, causing collisions and gradually form a true planet.
“It’s very exciting to watch an object of this new perspective is very interesting and not in observed by Hubble’s high resolution”.
“We expect this very large asteroids are not just as a forming planet’s block, but as an opportunity to study frozen planet formation in time”.
“Having the opportunity to use the Hubble, and seeing that image again and understand this automatically can change what we think about this and that object is a book that is very large and heavy”, Schmidt said as reported by China’s official news agency, Xinhua.
With the Hubble images, Schmidt said he and his colleagues can make a new measurement of the shape and size of Pallas. They can see the surface has dark and bright areas, which shows this water riched asteroid may have been experiencing internal changes in the same manner through which the planet.
“That’s what makes it more like a planet variety of colors and rounded shapes are very important as far as we understand it, is a dynamic object or objects that have had the exact same size since formed”, said Schmidt. “We think maybe it is a dynamic object”.
For the first time, Schmidt said he and his colleagues also saw a big crash at Pallas. They could not tell whether it is a crater, but depression did show something else important : that it can bring to small familly of pallas asteroids that orbit in space.
