A 73bn-kg, skyscraper-size chocolate creme egg spinning fast enough to eventually explode – it's asteroid Bennu Scientists have compared asteroid Bennu to a chocolate creme egg – and say it may explode as it continues to spin at an ever-increasing rate. “You could imagine maybe in a million years or less the whole thing flying apart,” said Daniel Scheeres, coauthor of a study published in Science Advances on Thursday into the cosmic …
It seems like any object with some rotation perpendicular to its orbit would slowly spin up. More explanation of the YORP effect would have been helpful, especially why it prefers to spin an object up rather than down. I infer that the time in sunlight makes the sunset side of the asteroid hotter than the sunrise side so more heat energy is radiated.
I've added a link to an in-depth explanation of YORP by the probe's principal investigator. As you can see it goes on for quite a while, and in all honesty, we ran out of time to condense the effect's description down into an explanation that would satisfy everyone.
Like any product, you have to draw a line at some point and ship it. Articles are no different -- otherwise, nothing would get published because we'd forever be trying to improve or add to them.
I encourage you to read up on it and share here your best explanations of it.
C.
Could the YORP effect be used to power a self-turning doner kebab grill or spit-roast?
If I'm going to build one I guess I'll need a bigger heater, a colder atmosphere, and bearings with less friction than Disaster Area's stuntship, for starters.
What else will I need?
Hmmmm.... chocolate......
But agree with you that since the yanks have bought Cadbury the quality has gone down.
Wife and I did visit the factory just after the buyout. Unfortunately we went on a maintenance day so the machines were all switched off. Anyway, part of the tour was the history of the place and how it built for the workers by the Cadbury family. Was kind of depressing seeing how the board sold the workers down the river
Surely the fact that one of the first few asteroids that we have inspected up close is apparently close (in geological terms) to disruption has important implications.
It implies that it is common for such bodies to be close to being disrupted, and hence places limits on the expected life-span of such bodies. Therefore, it also implies that such bodies must form at a rate to replace the loss by disruption. By form, I include entry into the inner solar system by perturbation of the Oort cloud.
The disruptive effect would only happen after the asteroid reached the inner solar system. The mechanism by which they leave the Oort Cloud must be a different one - possibly even random gravitational encounters would be sufficient, though the possibility of there being a massive dark body (e.g. Planet X) can't be discounted.
> the fact that one of the first few asteroids that we have inspected up close is apparently close [...] to disruption has important implications.
Most of all as regards to the strategies to adopt if one tries to hit our planet! Obviously many if not most of those suggested so far wouldn't work on a floating heap of rubble: Push/hold one spot, and the rest of the asteroid just goes on unabated. And while we might dodge a bullet, we would still receive a load of buckshot, just as devastating.
How can you stop/deviate a billion-ton loose heap of rubble?
"And while we might dodge a bullet, we would still receive a load of buckshot, just as devastating."
more so. A series of airbursts fro a disintegrating comet is hypothesised as having near-sterilised North America and caused the Younger Dryas event
https://craterhunter.wordpress.com/notes-on-ignimbrite-emplacement/part-two/
If this guy is right (look at the rest of his site) then we should be worried about what we can't see coming
> we should be worried about what we can't see coming
Which actually spells "everything"! Especially if our sky is eventually obscured by sheets of Internet satellites, but even now we usually only spot those flying boulders at the very last moment. So, either we don't notice them until it's too late, or they are so big we won't be able to do anything about them anyway.
The description suggests that it's spinning and the outer crust is sufficiently consolidated to hold the core in place against centrifugal force. If it were disrupted centrifugal force would disperse the core so what we'd get would be a fraction of it in separate chunks. The question then arises as to how big those chunks might be. Would they burn up on the atmosphere?
As per earlier comment, this is a sample of one. Is it a common structure? How do you identify others without going to visit them?
Is it the good ol' US "bigger is better"? How about tonnes, mega-tonnes?
I've listened to podcasts where they reference things that are 150,000 lbs, or 2,000,000 cu. ft. WTaF!? It's less typing and much more relatable to say 75 ton or 74,000 cu. yds
Do they measure cock size in thou'?
Using kilograms for stellar body masses is standard.
Just check Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun for instance) and look at the physical characteristics box on the right side: The sun's mass is given in kilograms.
> I'd rather not use wiki as an example of the truth
True, but it's the easiest example to link to...
No, that habit wasn't created by NASA (or even the USA) AFAIK. It seems to be quite old, I suppose from a time where SI units were still new.
Anyway, using "tons" is dangerous since there are several units with that name, and in this context it is hardly better. And who would understand "teragrams" and "petagrams"?...
While the YORP effect is a factor, I wold have thought that it's only a minor one because it would take so long to be effective and it's probably more likely that another clump of rocks could either strike, or pass close, to Bennu to sprinkle both sets of rocks around. But the chances are that, while a few might wander into the solar system, most of the rocks would simply party with other clumps.
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