It shouldn't exist, but it does. And one day it may put the whole earth in danger.
An asteroid named 1950 DA is orbiting the sun once every 2.2 years, but it is revolving once every 2.1 hours, quicker than the theoretical limit of centrifugal forces. It should break up at that speeds, rubble flying every which way. But it hasn't.
A new study by scientists at the University of Tennessee suggests that maybe the asteroid is being held together by cohesive forces, also know as van de Waals force. Basically, the molecular charge on one atom attracts it to its neighboring molecule, creating surface tension. This is what create the surface tension of water, for example.
This hypothesis was given in the article "Cohesive forces prevent the rotational breakup of rubble-pile asteroid (29075) 1950 DA," pubilshed in the science journal Nature. It was authored by Ben Rozitis, Eric MacLennan and Joshua P. Emery.
The asteroid 1950 DA is about 0.8 miles wide and weighs 4.6 trillion pounds. It is hurdling through space at such a trajectory that in 2002 it was estimated that there was a one in 300 chance it would hit the Earth in the year 2880. After years of further observation, that number has been revised to a much lower, but still possible, one in 19,800.
A report from 2003 about the probable impact of 1950 DA suggested that if the asteroid hit the Earth in 2880, it would likely hit the ocean, since the planet's surface is 70 percent water.
"Following the February 2013 asteroid impact in Chelyabinsk, Russia, there is renewed interest in figuring out how to deal with the potential hazard of an asteroid impact," said researcher Rozitis to UT. "Understanding what holds these asteroids together can inform strategies to guard against future impacts. With such tenuous cohesive forces holding one of these asteroids together, a very small impulse may result in a complete disruption."
If it hit the Atlantic Ocean about 360 miles offshore, which NASA researchers hypothesized it would, the asteroid would be moving at 38,000 miles per hour. The impact would cause a tsunami with 400-foot waves that would rush toward the East Coast of the United State and toward Europe.
Photo: Howard Dickins
