Solved the mystery of the appearance of the Martian asteroids-the Trojans

British astronomers were able to reveal this mystery

The famous Martian asteroids-the Trojans, “chasing” Mars got its current orbit due to the unusual interaction of light with matter is the progenitor of these heavenly stones, said the researchers.

“Martian Trojans did not arise as a result of the collision of an asteroid with Eureka and some other celestial body, and because of the phenomenon that we called the YORP effect. It is reflected in the fact that the sunlight can promote the asteroid, heating it on one side and causing it to radiate heat on the other. Eventually it spun up to such speeds that he’s falling apart,” said Christou Apostolos (Apostolos Christou) from the Observatory of the Armo (UK).

Today on Earth there are several dozen meteorites, which represent fragments of ancient Mars, a breakaway from him in the fall of large asteroids. These fragments of rocks of the red planet contain information about its geological and climatic past that helps scientists understand the evolutionary history of Mars.

In the Martian origin of these “heavenly stones” scientists are not in doubt, however, as of today, geologists and planetologists almost no information about how these fragments of crust and mantle of Mars could leave its surface and go sailing to the Ground.

Even greater mystery, as told by Christo, are the so-called Trojan asteroids of Mars – group is sufficiently large celestial bodies that orbit the red planet in front of it and behind it. They are located at specific points in the orbit of Mars, where the gravitational attraction of the Sun and planets are balanced, so that they can freely move together with her and make her a kind of cosmic “sweet”.

Their main unusual feature are the two things – their unusual chemical composition, making them more similar to planets than to other asteroids, and the fact that they move very dense and “heap” group, with the exception of a small number of asteroids.

For this reason, many planetary scientists believed that the ancestor of all of these heavenly stones were asteroid Eureka, the largest “Trojan” of Mars with a diameter of 1.3 kilometers, surviving a collision with another large asteroid in the distant past and broken up into several parts.

Christou and his colleagues for several years of watching the “Trojans” of Mars, trying to understand how did Eurydice and expected debris. Recently they were able to show that the asteroid is likely a piece of the crust of Mars, and not a “real” a celestial body that is newly supplied in front of the planetary community question – how could he understand, and why other Trojans of Mars do not have such an entourage.

British astronomers were able to solve the puzzle, calculating the rotation speed of the other two Trojans of Mars, yet unnamed asteroids and 101429 121514. As shown by these measurements, the first celestial body rotates very quickly, making one revolution around its axis in just 7 hours, whereas the second asteroid is his complete opposite – the day lasts more than 50 hours.

And the other option, as the scientists explain, are not suitable for the formation of the Suite of new Trojans. In the first case, the asteroid is at a point of the orbit of Mars, where the pieces will just fly into space and not moving close to the progenitor, and in the second it rotates too slow, because of what he just will not fall apart.

Eurydice, in turn, has no such problems — it is in a good region of the orbit of Mars, and completes one rotation around its axis in about three hours. For this reason, the YORP effect could cut off a sufficient number of fragments to generate a mysterious swarm of asteroids, the analogues of which are in orbits of Jupiter, Saturn and other giant planets, as scientists believe, can be formed in a similar way.

© 2017 – 2019, paradox. All rights reserved.