{"id":201073,"date":"2024-12-09T18:03:17","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T00:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/mit-astronomers-find-the-smallest-asteroids-ever-detected-in-the-main-belt"},"modified":"2024-12-09T18:03:17","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T00:03:17","slug":"mit-astronomers-find-the-smallest-asteroids-ever-detected-in-the-main-belt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/mit-astronomers-find-the-smallest-asteroids-ever-detected-in-the-main-belt","title":{"rendered":"MIT astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mit-astronomers-find-the-smallest-asteroids-ever-detected-in-the-main-belt.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs is estimated to have been about 10 kilometers across. That\u2019s about as wide as Brooklyn, New York. Such a massive impactor is predicted to hit Earth rarely, once every 100 million to 500 million years.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, much smaller asteroids, about the size of a bus, can strike Earth more frequently, every few years. These \u201cdecameter\u201d asteroids, measuring just tens of meters across, are more likely to escape the main asteroid belt and migrate in to become near-Earth objects. If they make impact, these small but mighty space rocks can send shockwaves through entire regions, such as the 1908 impact in Tunguska, Siberia, and the 2013 asteroid that broke up in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Urals. Being able to observe decameter main-belt asteroids would provide a window into the origin of meteorites.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>The team\u2019s detection method, which identified 138 space rocks ranging from bus-to stadium-sized, could aid in tracking potential asteroid impactors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs is estimated to have been about 10 kilometers across. That\u2019s about as wide as Brooklyn, New York. Such a massive impactor is predicted to hit Earth rarely, once every 100 million to 500 million years. In contrast, much smaller asteroids, about the size of a bus, can strike Earth [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}