meteor showerscommonly known as star rainare the remains of dust and rock fragments from comets or asteroids. Regularly, when the Earth encounters them on its way around the Sun, they pass through the atmosphere and burn up, creating those shooting stars we love so much. That’s why the Perseids, Geminids, Lyrids, and all those meteor showers we’re so familiar with are natural. That’s been the norm until now. But in a few years, we may have an exception due to the emergence of the first man-made meteor shower.
Even without knowing for sure whether it would reach Earth, the scientists who discovered it have already given it a name: dimorphidsThey chose the name because the debris that could have caused the meteor shower was formed by the impact of the asteroid Dimorphos, which was formed during NASA’s successful DART mission.
The purpose of this mission, completed in 2022, was to test the feasibility of using the ship for deflect an asteroid into an orbit far from Earth. That way, if a large asteroid is discovered in the future that could threaten our planet, there will be a way to try to remove it. The mission was a success. The ship is the size of a wrecked car Dimorphosthe smallest of the asteroids that make up Binary system Didymosand managed to get it out of the way. The thing is, logically, the impact left some traces debrisAnd they are the ones who can bring us a special meteor shower.
Meteor shower that could hit Mars and Earth
The DART strike was recorded by an Italian satellite called LICIACube. Thanks to their cameras, NASA scientists saw the debris left behind by the impact. And thanks to them, a team of scientists from Spanish and Italian research centers has now been able to model what will happen to that debris in the future.
The authors of the study, which has already been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, used supercomputer power to carry out the simulation. Specifically, They simulated 3 million particles different sizes, speeds and directions. So they saw that particles moving at 500 meters per second would take more than ten years to reach Mars, while some small pieces of Dimorphos could reach Earth in just seven years. Plus, they were moving 3.5 times faster.
Unfortunately, as explained IFScience one of the study’s authors, Eloy Peña Asensio“observations of the collision with telescopes showed that particles at such speeds would not be large enough to produce observed meteors“.
We may have a meteor shower, but it may be invisible. OR We may just have to wait a little longer.
Other options
There may be slower but larger particles that also reach Earth and produce visible meteor showerIn this case, modeling will not be enough. Observational campaigns will need to be conducted in the coming decades to check whether dimorphids are indeed reaching our skies noticeably.
If that were the case, we would be dealing with a unique event. The first man-made meteor shower. Although it may not be the last. It is only a matter of time before we eventually stumble upon the remnants of some such impact. Certainly better than a piece of space junk over our heads.
Source: Hiper Textual
