Astronomers from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland have found that a recently discovered asteroid has been following the Earth in its motion around the sun for at least the past 250,000 years, and may be intimately related to the origin of our planet. Their research paper appears in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The asteroid first caught the eye of the scientists – Apostolos “Tolis” Christou and David Asher – two months after it was found by the WISE infrared survey satellite, launched in 2009 by the United States. Dr. Christou said:
Its average distance from the sun is identical to that of the Earth, but what really impressed me at the time was how Earth-like its orbit was.
Most near-Earth asteroids – NEAs for short – have very eccentric, or egg-shaped, orbits that take the asteroid right through the inner solar system. But the new object, designated 2010 SO16, is different. Its orbit is almost circular, so it cannot come close to any other planet in the solar system except possibly Earth.
The researchers set out to investigate how stable this orbit is and how long the asteroid has occupied it. To do that, they first had to take into account the current uncertainty in the asteroid’s orbit. Dr. Asher said:
Not knowing precisely the location of a newly-discovered NEA is quite common. The only way to eliminate the uncertainty is to keep tracking the asteroid for as long as possible, usually months or years.
But the two scientists overcame that problem by creating virtual “clones” of the asteroid for every possible orbit that it could conceivably occupy. They then simulated the evolution of these clones under the gravity of the sun and the planets for two million years into the past and in the future.
They found that all the clones remained in a so-called “horseshoe” state with respect to the Earth. In this configuration, an object mimics very closely the orbital motion of our planet around the sun, but, as seen from Earth, it appears to slowly trace out a horseshoe shape in space. Asteroid 2010 SO16 takes 175 years to make the trip from one end of the horseshoe to the other. So while on the one hand its orbit is remarkably similar to Earth’s, in fact, according to Dr. Christou:
This asteroid is “terraphobic.” It keeps well away from the Earth. So well, in fact, that it has likely been in this orbit for several hundred thousand years, never coming closer to our planet than 50 times the distance to the moon.
This is where it is now, near the end of the horseshoe trailing the Earth.
Currently, three other horseshoe companions of the Earth are known to exist but, unlike 2010 SO16, these linger for a few thousand years at most before moving on to different orbits. Also, with an estimated diameter of 200-400 meters, 2010 SO16 is by far the largest of Earth’s horseshoe asteroids. The team used the Las Cumbres Observatory’s Faulkes Telescope in an on-going campaign to track the object and refine its orbit further. According to Dr. Asher:
It is not that difficult to spot with a medium-sized professional telescope. It will remain as an evening object in Earth’s skies for many years to come.
Ultimately, Christou and Asher would like to know where it came from, and they have already thought of several possibilities.
It could be an ordinary asteroid coming from the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter. In that case, the random gravitational pull of the different planets would be responsible for its present orbit, something that Tolis and David think is an unlikely proposition.
It could also be a piece of the moon that escaped the gravity of the Earth-moon system and went into an independent orbit around the sun. However, the very stability of its orbit means that there is currently no way to transport it from the moon to where it is now.
Finally, 2010 SO16 could represent leakage from a population of objects near the so-called triangular equilibrium points 60 degrees ahead of and behind the Earth in its orbit. Such a population has been postulated in the past but never observed, because such objects are always near the sun in the sky. If they do exist, they may represent relic material from the formation of Earth, the moon, and the other inner planets 4.5 billion years ago.
NIBIRU?
No. Not Niburu. There is no evidence that there IS a Niburu.
i dont fancy object like nibiru comig into our neighbourhood but :
- there is suspicion of a brown dwarf orbiting a sun
- after IRAS was sent to do its job it was reported in major newspapers (not the sun)
about discovery of planet X
thats only two i remember at the moment , lets hope those are not dangerous to earth,
also if there is some disturbance in orbits of eg. neptune,
why don’t just calculate it ??
Nibiru is seems to be the comet Elenin; watch these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfOfBrNUOGA&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/user/9Nania#p/u/7/CUo9KPIX4Zo
[...] According to this report, the “communication signals” being passed between the giant asteroids 2010 SO16 and 2005 YU55 currently headed towards Earth, and which we reported on in our April 21st report [...]
Sounds like a nice ringside seat, for a Watcher.
Suggestion: Check to see if there are several similar objects in this same orbital configuration, only ‘phased’ so there is always at least one near the ‘endpoint’ relatively close to Earth. Oh, and perhaps check for the same currently near the ‘leading’ point too. How else would one arrange to observe Earth from opposed points, safely far away, but not too far?
For your amusement, a short story: everist.org/texts/Fermis_Urbex_Paradox.txt
[...] las “señales de comunicación” que fueron pasada entre los asteroides gigantes 2010 SO16 y 2005 YU55 en dirección hacia la Tierra, las cuales fueron reportadas en nuestro reporte del 21 [...]
[...] las “señales de comunicación” que fueron pasada entre los asteroides gigantes 2010 SO16 y 2005 YU55 en dirección hacia la Tierra, las cuales fueron reportadas en nuestro reporte del 21 [...]
I do hope that a probe may be sent to SO16 to clear out the hidden facts about earth.
[...] to this report, the “communication signals” being passed between the giant asteroids 2010 SO16 and 2005 YU55 currently headed towards Earth, and which we reported on in our April 21st report [...]
This counteracts all gravitational theory. How can an asteroid do 2x almost 90 degree turns at each end of its horseshoe orbit (ie it reverses direction at each end of its orbit)
Is gravity wrong? Are our calculations of gravity wrong? Is our understanding of the the laws of physics flawed?
Here we have physical actual proof that our math is wrong. We cannot explain this mathematically or physically using current theory.
We need a new theory.
You are visualizing the diagram incorrectly. Each frame in that animation is a snapshot each year when the Earth is in the same place in its orbit. The asteroid is moving in a circular orbit around the sun, but due to complicated dynamical effects, a small body sharing the same orbit as a large body (and starting sufficiently far away) will never catch it. The earth tugs the object a little faster in its orbit, which makes the radius of its orbit a little larger, which then slows the object’s orbit, and then it very slowly moves away from the earth in its orbit. I suggest you google “Horseshoe Orbit”, there is good material out there.
I’m sure the simulation on this page uses Newton’s laws of motion to generate the output you see. The motion is easy to visualize if you think of the motion toward and away from the sun. From an astroid centric view it is moving toward the sun and speeding up in its orbit catching up to the earth. As it moves away from the sun it slows down and loses the race towards the earth. Only when it is close to the earth is it pulled toward and away from the sun relative the the earth’s distance from the sun.
Your comments sound as if they came from Miles Mathis whom I respect for many of his ideas, just not this one.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Aliens! You nutcases give conspiracy awareness a bad rep, be responsible for the things you say/wright instead of filtering out the things that oppose your views, sorry guys I belive we are in a global crisis but this isn’t it
@gene bidwell, please enlighten me as to how gravity only produces that 180 degree turn?