Supermassive Black Hole A Star

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Ep. 36, Page 42

smbhax

on March 19, 2019

A couple new BBC articles on findings from space probes visiting giant rocky things in space!

New Horizons: Ultima Thule 'a time machine' to early Solar System - Scientists now think that this "giant snowman" probably formed from a gentle collapse of a particle cloud, with the final two lobes bumping together at no more than 2-3 m/s, "about the speed you might run into a wall." They're still working on figuring out why one of the lobes, Ultima, is really flat, but they've got some theories.

Hayabusa2: Asteroid mission exploring a 'rubble pile' - The Japanese probe has found asteroid Ryugu is about 50% empty space, and likely "formed when rocks were blasted off a bigger asteroid and came back together again." And as a bonus, there are also some findings mentioned about asteroid Bennu, being explored by NASA's OSIRIS-REx ("Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer" : P) probe.