Studies have shown that a swarm of 88 near-Earth asteroids hidden in the debris that makes the Taurid Meteor Shower came from a single comet breakdown 20,000 years ago.
Astronomers from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, studied the numerous objects inside the 'Taurid complex.' They wanted to learn more about their origin.
The bigger asteroids were first discovered in the stream in the 1980s, prompting astronomers William Napier and Victor Clube to speculate that they had a common ancestor with Comet Encke. This periodic comet orbits the Sun every three years, NASA said.
Research authors Ignacio Ferrín and Vincenzo Orofino said some of these asteroids are more than a mile broad. These are too huge to have originated from Comet Encke.
A review of hundreds of scientific articles published since the 1980s, as well as a measurement of reflected light from the more giant space rocks, went into their current study.
This allowed them to offer 'additional proof' that Comet Encke and the bigger asteroids were all formed by the 20,000-year-old disintegration of a 62-mile-wide ice ball. . This is close in size to the Bernardinelli-Bernstein "mega comet."
Does It Pose Harm to Earth?
Researchers said per Phys.org that the asteroids in the stream might represent a hazard to Earth, and other debris from the old comet may have collided with the planet in the past.
Every year, Earth travels through a portion of the stream, visible as shooting stars in the sky between October in the southern hemisphere and November in the northern hemisphere.
Astronomers found Comet Encke in 1786. Like previous comets approaching the Sun, this asteroid left a trail of debris in its wake as it approached the Sun.
Because asteroids are such a huge, densely populated, and unpredictable complex of rocks, debris, and dust that regularly come near the Earth, they've been the topic of a lot of scholarly research in recent decades, with some focused on the larger asteroids.
How Taurid Harmed Earth's Atmosphere
Experts have previously connected Taurid consequences to the extinction of archaic societies and global climatic cooling during the Younger Dryas glacial epoch.
The Tunguska incident, in which a tiny asteroid exploded five miles over a populated region of Russia in 1908, is considered to have been related to the Taurid stream. Discover Magazine said millions of trees died during Comet Encke's closest approach to the Earth.
Ferrín said in a Market Research Telecast report that Comet Encke was at its closest approach to Earth two weeks before the collision. Hence, what happened "was not a coincidence," but that "implies that they are associated."
The Taurid complex is also responsible for the Chelyabinsk meteor, which wounded over 1,500 people when it exploded in 2013. In 2005, while testing a new 250mm telescope and video camera, NASA astronomer Rob Suggs noticed a short flash of light from a lunar impact event, subsequently confirming it was part of the Taurid meteor shower.
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