Posted on 03/30/2017 8:13:58 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The unnamed asteroid shares Jupiter's orbital space while moving in the opposite direction as the planet, which looks like a recipe for a collision, astronomers said. Yet somehow, the asteroid has managed to safely dodge Jupiter for at least tens of thousands of laps around the sun, a new study showed.
It was given the provisional designation 2015 BZ509 with the nickname "BZ." Scientists noticed that the asteroid moves in the opposite direction of every planet and 99.99 percent of asteroids orbiting the sun, in a state known as retrograde motion.
...
BZ may seem like a lucky asteroid, narrowly dodging its own demise over and over for such a long time. But surprisingly, Jupiter's gravity has played a big role in helping the asteroid to avoid such a collision, Wiegert said.
"BZ passes once inside and once outside Jupiter each time they orbit the sun, and the two gravitational tugs that Jupiter gives the asteroid cancel out, giving BZ opposing 'nudges' that keep it on track," Wiegert said. "Ironically, BZ would be more likely to crash into Jupiter if that planet had no gravity at all, because without the gravitational nudges, [the asteroid] would gradually drift out of sync with that planet."
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Or maybe Urethra, after Urethra Franklin.
:-)
Looks like a black and white photo of an avocado......
As you can see from the image posted and many more at NASA, Iapetus is neither round nor a boulder.
Actually it bears more resemblance to the Death Star in Star Wars than some piece of edible vegetation. Avocados are generally oblong spheroids not hexagonal.
Spherical ‘boulders’ are concretions, not all of which are perfect spheres.
That's what I was thinking.
Came out of that same sound-stage in Nevada where they faked the moon-shot.
Or was it shot the fake moon? Dern, can't remember now!
And that description does not a[ply to Iapetus.
Iapetus is a concretion, just as any other moon or planet.
Give it a rest ... there is no proof, just theories (which change daily) on the formation of planets, moons, solar systems, galaxies, the Universe. Again, your idea/’theory’ does not apply to large bodies in orbit around planets or to planets.
Sez you
An injection molding seam.
This changes everything
An injection molding seam.
—
12 miles high completely around the moon ... very very big injection molder. Got one?
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