Sentences with phrase «smaller than an asteroid»

A meteoroid is any interplanetary object bigger than a speck of dust and smaller than an asteroid.

Not exact matches

The particles of rock and ice in these belts vary in size from the tiniest dust grain, smaller than a millimetre across, up to asteroid - like bodies many kilometres in diameter [2].

Astronomers say that incoming asteroids smaller than that would have a regional, rather than global, effect; ones that are less than about 180 feet are likely to disintegrate in the atmosphere.

But Phobos and Deimos, among the smallest moons in the solar system, look more like misshapen asteroids than Earth's moon, Sumner says.

Surveys show that we have found nearly all of the potentially world - destroying asteroids — those larger than a kilometre — but many smaller objects remain uncatalogued.

«There are other elements involved, but if size were the only factor, we'd be looking for an asteroid smaller than about 40 feet (12 meters) across,» said Paul Chodas, a senior scientist in the Near - Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. «There are hundreds of millions of objects out there in this size range, but they are small and don't reflect a lot of sunlight, so they can be hard to spot.

Although astronomer David Jewitt of the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii thinks Rabinowitz has done a good job counting the big asteroids, he is more worried about the hundreds of thousands of rocks smaller than 1 kilometer but larger than 100 meters.

Moreover, small bodies cool more quickly than large ones, so asteroids presumably would have quickly shed whatever feeble heat they accumulated when they formed.

Rather than random occurrences, many large airbursts might result from collisions between Earth and streams of debris associated with small asteroids or comets.

Small asteroids are much more numerous than big ones — astronomers estimate near - Earth space likely contains millions of NEAs a few yards (meters) across, nearly 16,000 NEAs between 100 and 300 yards across, and nearly 5,000 NEAs between 300 and 1,000 yards in size.

Officials in charge of NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission announced that they will snatch a small boulder off an asteroid, as illustrated above, rather than bag up an entire aAsteroid Redirect Mission announced that they will snatch a small boulder off an asteroid, as illustrated above, rather than bag up an entire aasteroid, as illustrated above, rather than bag up an entire asteroidasteroid.

Ideas abounded: using ion engines to ferry up the components of a moon base; beaming power to robotic rovers on the Martian moon Phobos; attaching high - power Hall effect thrusters to the International Space Station (ISS) and putting it on a Mars cycler orbit; preplacing chemical rocket boosters along an interplanetary trajectory in advance so astronauts could pick them up along the way; using exploration pods like those in 2001: A Space Odyssey rather than space suits; instead of sending astronauts to an asteroid, bringing a (very small) asteroid to astronauts at the space station.

As a star much more massive than the sun contracts to the size of an asteroid — or even smaller if it becomes a black hole — it creates unimaginable densities, temperatures, and energy.

Because smaller chunks of asteroids drift from the point of collision faster than larger pieces do, these asteroid families become shaped like the letter «V.» Smaller pieces spread out far and wide from the original impact site, while larger fragments remain condensed at thesmaller chunks of asteroids drift from the point of collision faster than larger pieces do, these asteroid families become shaped like the letter «V.» Smaller pieces spread out far and wide from the original impact site, while larger fragments remain condensed at theSmaller pieces spread out far and wide from the original impact site, while larger fragments remain condensed at the point.

Dynamicists place less importance on small objects like Pluto, which don't significantly affect the movements of planets and asteroids, than they do on larger, more massive bodies.

«While many known asteroids have passed by closer to Earth than Florence will... all of those were estimated to be smaller,» Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near - Earth Object Studies, said in a statement.

In an earlier study, also published in MNRAS, researchers concluded that small bodies such as asteroids are more likely to be flung out of binary star systems than systems with single stars (like the solar system).

Its orbit places Vesta in the Main Asteriod Belt, but the object more closely resembles a small planet or Earth's Moon than another asteroid (more discussion).

Bear in mind we're more likely to be hit by a small asteroid than a large one.

«While Ceres is a lot bigger than the candidate asteroids that NASA is working on sending humans to, many of these smaller bodies are produced by collisions with larger asteroids such as Ceres and Vesta.

While I'm posting (I can see how you guys get into this) I'm also very uncomfortable with your notion of «tacit knowledge:» it certainly seems to be tacit knowledge in the blogosphere that the chances of the climate sensitivity (equilibrium warming on indefinite stabilization at 560ppm CO2, for the non-enthusiasts) being greater than or equal to 6 degrees are too small to be worth worrying about (meaning down at the level of an asteroid strike).

The reason I stuck with it is that it's hard to find a demographer or other expert on population and social trends who sees even a small chance of humankind's peaking at anything lower than nine billion — barring some catastrophic epidemic or asteroid strike.