Geminid meteor mystery solved? It was a collision!

Geminid meteor thriller

In a NASA blog post on June 14, 2023, Desiree Apodaca at Goddard House Flight Middle in Maryland described new insights concerning the annual Geminid meteor shower. She wrote it’s doubtless that:

… a sudden, highly effective occasion – similar to a high-speed collision with one other physique or a gaseous explosion, amongst different prospects – created the Geminid stream.

And that’s fascinating! That’s as a result of most meteors in annual showers – just like the Delta Aquariid meteors or Perseid meteors, developing later this summer season – are a results of icy comets orbiting the sun. In order comets transfer via space, they litter their orbits with particles. Thus, we get annual meteor showers when our planet Earth passes via a stream of comet particles.

However the Geminid meteors – which peak every year in December, to the delight of earthly stargazers – are completely different. For some many years, we’ve recognized the Geminids’ dad or mum physique isn’t a fragile, icy comet. As an alternative, it’s a extra substantial, rocky asteroid: 3200 Phaethon.

Jamey Szalay of Princeton College, one of many authors of a brand new research, said:

What’s actually bizarre is that we all know that Phaethon is an asteroid, however because it flies by the sun, it appears to have some form of temperature-driven exercise. Most asteroids don’t do this.

So, it’s been a thriller: how can a rocky asteroid spawn a meteor bathe?

The Parker Photo voltaic Probe gives a clue

Every winter, the Geminid meteors gentle up the sky as they race previous Earth, producing one of the crucial intense meteor showers within the night time sky. Now, a latest mission is providing new evidence {that a} violent, catastrophic occasion created the Geminids.

The Parker Solar Probe is finding out the sun and circling near our house star. Because it does, it passes via clouds of dust grains from asteroid Phaethon that pelt the spacecraft. And these high-speed impacts create distinctive electrical alerts, or plasma clouds. As NASA mentioned:

These impression clouds produce distinctive electrical alerts that a number of sensors on the probe’s FIELDS instrument choose up. The FIELDS instrument measures electrical and magnetic fields close to the sun.

Utilizing this Parker Photo voltaic Probe knowledge, the scientists modeled completely different formation situations for the Geminid meteor stream. What they discovered was that the violent situation, modeling an impression with asteroid Phaethon or sudden fuel explosion, finest matched their observations. Watch the video beneath to see how the violent mannequin finest match the information.

Backside line: Information from the Parker Photo voltaic Probe helped scientists uncover that the Geminid meteor bathe is most probably the results of a violent occasion on asteroid Phaethon.

Source: Formation, Structure, and Detectability of the Geminids Meteoroid Stream

Via NASA

Read more: 2023 Geminid meteor shower: All you need to know