melikamp [soylentnews.org] writes:
Hot on the heels of finding a bizarre
many-tailed asteroid [hubblesite.org], Hubble has now
photographed [hubblesite.org] the never-before-seen breakup of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces drifting away from each other at a leisurely 1.6 km/h. The crumbling of the asteroid P/2013 R3 is
unlikely [hubblesite.org] due to a collision with another asteroid, which would be instantaneous and violent by comparison to what has been observed. Nor is the asteroid coming unglued due to the pressure of interior ices warming and vaporizing, because it is far too cold. This leaves a scenario in which the asteroid is disintegrating due to a subtle effect of sunlight (possibly the
YORP effect [wikipedia.org]), which causes the rotation rate to slowly increase, and the pieces to gently pull apart due to centrifugal force.
Original Submission
