what are asteroids? why it is called asteroids?
Answers
Asteroids are lumps of rock - or perhaps ice - or maybe solid metal - that were “left over” at the formation of the solar system. Most of them are orbiting somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter - but there are others similar bodies (but not called asteroids) far *FAR* out from the sun in the “Kuiper belt”.
These objects are tumbling around in those orbits - sometimes bumping into each other - or being moved around by the changing gravitational fields of various planets as they orbit.
That sometimes causes an asteroid to be knocked out of their nice tidy orbit and to start orbiting the sun in a way that can cause it to go closer or further than the asteroid/Kuiper belt.
These stray asteroids can (rarely) impact planets and moons - or crash into the sun.
Asteroid can vary in size from something the size of a grain of sand all the way up to something the size of a small moon.
Small asteroids hit the Earth all the time and are not a problem. Larger ones either burn up and break apart in the upper atmosphere or hit the ground somewhere fairly harmlessly.
Very large ones, the size of a mountain or a small US state can cause serious problems - but they are quite rare. There are craters left behind by these impacts all over the Earth - but they aren’t always easy to see once eroded by wind and rain and covered in vegetation. The asteroid that impacted off the coast of Mexico in the time of the dinosaurs was the size of a medium-sized city(!) and the consequences of the resulting explosion was to wipe out a large fraction of the species living on Earth at the time.
Once an asteroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere, we call it a “Meteor” and if it hits the ground, we call it a “Meteorite”. These are really the exact same things - but back in history, we didn’t know that - so we have different words for different ways we observe them!
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Marvin Sleppy, studied Business Administration/management at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (1975)
Answered March 12, 2018
The going theory of their being where they are is that it's a failed attempt at building a planet. The reason it failed is the constant passing through jupiters gravitational influence. As soon as a good side segment got going they would encounter jupiters influence and get pulled apart.ceres is the largest piece to be seen in the field and the available material is so spread out that gathering it up is impossible. Without jupiter those spread out particles would seek to bunch up an form a planet.
➡➡Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun. Although asteroids orbit the Sun like planets, they are much smaller than planets. Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the sun. .Most of them live in the main asteroid belt—a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.