2024-07-26 17:08:00
Scientists from Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and the Júlio de Mesquita Filho São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil analyzed the surface and characteristics of the celestial body in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The Aerospace Bioengineering researcher at UC3M, Gabriel Borderes-Motta, stated that through a study “it was calculated that Apophis has a 2% probability of impacting the Earth” and noted that “the collision is not the only possibility in approach events like this.”
Scientists from Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and the Júlio de Mesquita Filho São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil analyzed the surface and characteristics of the celestial body in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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The low percentage is due to the fact that the gravitational interaction between a planet and a body like Apophis can change its form, break it into pieces, disintegrate possible rocks distributed on the asteroid’s surface, or even eliminate other bodies that orbit around it.
Asteroid Apophis
Exploration in the space field presents the challenge that, in most cases, it is impossible to directly experiment with space materials. Because of this, numerous studies are approached from the fields of mathematics and physics, taking into account as many variables as possible.
In this sense, Gabriel Borderes-Motta explained that “the team has carried out numerical simulations in order to predict how the particles orbiting the asteroid will react to different situations and how they could influence Apophis’ behavior”.
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The experts used a sample of a disk of 15,000 particles of different sizes in the vicinity of the planetoid. The first set of simulations was designed considering only the gravitational disturbance of Apophis over periods of 24 hours during 30 years, while the second included the disturbance produced by solar radiation pressure. In both, three cases were proposed in which the asteroid had different densities.
Asteroid Apophis
“We considered a polyhedron of 340 meters with a uniform density in three different cases. In each case, we started from a different particle density, from highest to lowest,” specified Borderes-Motta.
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From these representations, it was concluded that the angle of inclination of the celestial body was greater in low densities (4 º) than in high densities (2 º); additionally, with lower particle density and greater solar radiation pressure, fewer particles remained intact.
PM / Gi