Navigation
Contribute
Sister projects
From WinkyPedia, the free encyclopedia that tells you what you already knew
An asteroid is a rock in space that did not become a planet and would prefer not to talk about it.[1] Most asteroids orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is less a belt than an extremely large and mostly empty car park.
Films show the asteroid belt as crowded, requiring fast reactions and dramatic steering. In fact the asteroids in it are typically hundreds of thousands of kilometres apart, and spacecraft have flown through it without incident. A spacecraft crossing the belt is less likely to hit an asteroid than to get bored.[2]
Some asteroids have small moons of their own, a fact astronomers describe in technical papers as “quite sweet”.
A rock in space is an asteroid. When it enters the atmosphere it becomes a meteor; when it lands it becomes a meteorite; when someone picks it up and puts it on a desk, it becomes a paperweight. Each change of name comes with a small increase in value and a large decrease in ambition. In all four stages it remains a rock.
More than a million asteroids have been found, and they are named by the people who discover them, subject to the approval of a committee. The committee has approved asteroids named after composers, towns and cats, and at least one named after the committee, which it approved unanimously and then declined to discuss.[3]