Word: asteroidal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Palomar Observatory spotted a thin streak made by a rapidly moving object. When the streak, in slightly different positions, showed up on later photographs, the astronomers were sure they had seen something new. Last week Drs. Seth B. Nicholson and Robert S. Richardson announced that the streak was an asteroid (midget planet) only nine-tenths of a mile in diameter and about 8,000,000 miles away from the earth...
Most of the 1,600-odd known asteroids (small-fry planets) revolve in orderly orbits between the paths of Mars and Jupiter. But last week an asteroid was off its reservation and rapidly approaching the orbit of the earth. Astronomer C.A. Wirtanen of Lick Observatory, Calif., who spotted it, figured that it was some two miles in diameter (about the size of the Matterhorn broken off at its base) and big enough to give the earth a sizable jolt...
...runaway asteroid was a fine prize for astronomers, who rarely get a leisurely chance to study such objects passing so close to the earth. Three other asteroids (the latest ten years ago) are known to have wandered inside the earth's orbit, but they were visible only briefly and have since been lost in space. Wirtanen's asteroid will probably stay around long enough for its orbit to be calculated accurately. Astronomers can keep track of it and perhaps find where it goes when it turns away from...
...comet collision would be a cream-puff blow compared with an encounter between the earth and an asteroid. These small bodies, believed to be pieces of a planet once located between Mars and Jupiter, have highly eccentric orbits and often shoot close to the earth. In 1937 a small asteroid, Hermes, missed the earth by only 500,000 miles - a bare stone's throw as interplanetary space is reckoned...
...great speed of planetary flight (the earth's is 18 m.p.s.), a collision between the earth and a moderate-sized asteroid (diameter: 100 miles) might well smash a continent...