26 Mar 2014 - First Ring System Around Asteroid: Chariklo Found to Have Two Rings

[NASA]

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/images/default-asteroids.jpg (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=46853)26 Mar 2014 - First Ring System Around Asteroid: Chariklo Found to Have Two Rings
Asteroid, Chariklo, found to have two rings.


More... (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=46853)

[swoods_blue]

You wouldn't think that a puny little asteroid could keep such rings in place for very long (in astronomical terms). What would the gravity of the host object be?

Incidentally, I saw they said this asteroid was believed to be a "Centaur", or a hybrid asteroid/comet. Thought that was interesting, too.

[swoods_blue]

I happened upon an answer to the question I just posed:

Planetary.org: "A Centaur’s shadow reveals bright rings (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2014/0326-a-centaurs-shadow-reveals.html)"

"Chariklo’s rings are narrow, confined to just a few kilometers in width. In the absence of active shepherding, planetary rings will spread due to collisions between ring particles. Given the altitude of Chariklo’s rings and the size of Chariklo itself, its rings should spread out beyond their current extent in matters of a few thousand years, unless there are small, as-yet-unseen moons there to guide the rings. Such shepherd moons have been seen in planetary ring systems like Saturn’s and Uranus’. According to the analysis presented by Braga-Ribas and co-authors, shepherd satellites only a few kilometers in radius would be sufficient to sustain the features observed in Chariklo’s rings. Such satellites would be extremely faint and close to Chariklo, and would be extremely difficult to detect on their own."

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Good grief, no wonder there were so many earthquakes recently -- and during the passage of those silly comets everyone worried about over the last few.
That recent asteroid came really close to the planet, IMO close enough to cause trouble -- like a big spoon through alphabet soup!

I think a spoon disturbing a bowl of soup is a fairly good analogy, lol -- for these big ass space rocks that come whizzing by...
Surely they must interact on some level with the magnetic field around our planet and between earth/Sun?

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