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Round about
Natural History, Nov, 2004 by Duncan Goldthwaite, Neil DeGrasse Tyson
The numerous craters on asteroids Eros and 243 Ida, shown in the photographs illustrating Neil deGrasse Tyson's recent "Universe" cohere ("Vagabonds in Space," 7-8/04), point to a tremendous bombardment in the remote past. As a geologist, I am also struck by the asteroids" rounded shapes; one might expect, if they originated from a cooled planet or a larger asteroid, to see sheer faces and angular edges. Or were the fragments molten at rile time of the breakup?
Duncan Goldthwaite
Metairie, Louisiana
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NEI[ DEGRASSE REI'I IF',: The absence of sharp, angular features on what are surely fragments of once-larger bodies cannot be entirely credited to local melting at the site of impact. Asteroids owe much of their roundness to the slow and steady erosion caused by collisions with troy meteoroids, whose collective influence is much like that sandblasting. Furthermore, all the dust resettles, filling in the low-lying areas on the surface. After a few billion years of this, you can't help looking like a potato.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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