An Asteroid the Size of a Dwarf Planet Is Lurking In Our Solar System

Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot summarizes an article from LiveScience: There's a giant asteroid somewhere out in the solar system, and it hurled a big rock at Earth. The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008.NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroidone more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid beltthat formed in the presence of water under intermediate temperatures and pressures. The mineral makeup of these space rocks offers clues about the "parent asteroid" that birthed a given meteor, researchers said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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