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 asteroid - one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt - that 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.

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