Scientists Investigating Whether Object NASA Is Approaching Is Core of Destroyed Planet
Scientists have long been intrigued by a massive potato-shaped asteroid called 16 Psyche, which they suspect is full of metal and therefore potentially worth ridiculous amounts of money for future asteroid mining operations.
The 273-kilometer-tall object, which orbits the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has two massive crater-like depressions that researchers say are present. These depressions may be closely related to its still largely unknown origin story.
One new paper published in the magazine JGR PlanetsAn international team of researchers sought to get to the bottom of one of the important unanswered questions about 16 Psyche. Would a planet’s core, the billion-year-old building block of a planet, have a “large metallic core buried under rocks” in which case, or would it be “a homogeneous mixture of iron and rock?”
In other words, could 16 Psyche be the exposed ancient remains of a planetary core? crust and mantle flew awayOr is it a separate chunk of primitive rock, much less dense and potentially full of holes, that was originally rich in metal or mixed with metal after collisions with other asteroids?
While the latest paper doesn’t necessarily rule out either of these possibilities (its simulations support both hypotheses), the goal was to know what to look out for once. NASA’s mission to space rockLaunched in October 2023, it comes nearly three and a half years from now.
Once there, the spacecraft would finally be able to allow us to unravel once and for all the mystery surrounding the history of 16 Psyche. Like Universe Today pointingThe size of 16 Psyche makes it much more accessible than the thousands of kilometers we would have to drill into on Earth. (So far we’ve come only 0.2 percent of the way to the center of our planet.)
For their paper, the researchers took into account 16 Psyche’s unusual jagged shape, previous findings that concluded it may be filled with metal material, and its porosity.
“Large impact basins, or craters, are excavated deep into the asteroid, providing clues as to what the asteroid’s interior is made of,” said Namya Baijal, first author of the study and a University of Arizona doctoral candidate. expression. “By simulating the formation of one of the largest craters, we were able to make testable predictions about the overall composition of Psyche when the spacecraft arrived.”
“One of our key findings was that porosity (the amount of empty space inside the asteroid) played an important role in the formation of these craters,” he added. “Porosity is often overlooked because it is difficult to include in models, but our simulations show that it can strongly influence the impact process and the shape of the craters left behind.”
A more porous asteroid would theoretically have deeper, steeper-sided craters on its surface. The researchers hope that close-up observations made by NASA’s Psyche mission will allow them to determine its porosity and therefore infer whether its interior is metal covered in rock or a more homogeneous mixture of both.
Researchers used the unusual metaphor of an abandoned pizza parlor to explain their way of thinking.
“The cooks are long gone, but you can look at what’s left behind—ovens, dough pieces, toppings—and make inferences about how pizzas were made,” co-author Erik Asphaug, a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, said in a statement. “We can’t reach the core of Earth, Mars or Venus, but maybe we can reach the core of an early asteroid.”
The team uncovered two possible internal structures.
“One is a layered structure with a metallic core and a thin, rocky mantle, and probably formed as a result of a violent impact stripping away the outer layers,” Baijal said. he explained. “The other is a uniform mixture of metals and silicate created by a more destructive impact that mixed everything together, like some metal-rich meteorites found on Earth.”
They attempted to reconstruct the known dimensions of crater 16 Psyche by simulating a series of asteroid belt collisions with objects of different sizes.
“We found that an impactor about three miles in diameter would create a crater of the right dimensions,” Baijal said. “The formation of the crater is consistent with both scenarios for the structure of Psyche.”
In short, although we’re only inching closer to answering the question of whether 16 Psyche is the ancient remnants of the planet’s core, we’ll be ready when NASA’s mission gets there.
“When the spacecraft reaches Psyche in a few years, the geochemists, geologists and modelers on the team will all be looking at the same object and trying to interpret what we see,” Asphaug said.
“This study gives us an advantage,” he added.
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