Can an asteroid become a planet within 100 million years?

The asteroid belt, with its many small rocky bodies, looks in some ways like the whole inner solar system might have looked roughly 10 to 100 million years after the Sun was born. So why doesn't the asteroid belt condense and form a planet? First of all, there's not enough total mass in the belt to form a planet.23 Nov 2009

Could a planet form in the asteroid belt?

This gravitational accretion led to the formation of the planets. Planetesimals within the region that would become the asteroid belt were too strongly perturbed by Jupiter's gravity to form a planet. Instead, they continued to orbit the Sun as before, occasionally colliding.

Why can’t an asteroid be a planet?

Jupiter's gravity is so strong, that it makes asteroid orbits within the Kirkwood gaps unstable. It's these gaps that prevented a single planetary body from forming in that region. So, because of Jupiter, asteroids formed into families of debris, rather than a single planetary body.

What size asteroid would be a planet killer?

Ultimately, scientists estimate that an asteroid would have to be about 96 km (60 miles) wide to completely and utterly wipe out life on our planet.

Are asteroids older than the planets?

Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.

Has any planet been destroyed?

An asteroid that slammed into the Sudan desert on Oct. 7, 2008, shot out lots of little space rocks holding a precious secret: diamonds that likely formed billions of years ago inside the embryo of a now-decimated planet.

Will the Earth be destroyed?

But don't worry, this scorching destruction of Earth is a long way off: about 7.59 billion years in the future, according to some calculations. Even if our planet somehow survives and remains in orbit around the bloated red giant Sun, Earth's natural orbital decay means it would merge with the dead Sun's remnant.

What if Earth crashed into Jupiter?

Our planet is too small and would burn up in the atmosphere before that ever happens. This would have a huge impact on Jupiter, as the Earth's remains would completely mix into its atmosphere. So if you ever notice our planet going off course and heading towards Jupiter, you might want to jump off along the way.

Which object is the largest?

The biggest single entity that scientists have identified in the universe is a supercluster of galaxies called the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. It's so wide that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the entire structure. For perspective, the universe is only 13.8 billion years old.

Is there a planet killer coming?

On average, an asteroid the size of Apophis (370 metres) is expected to impact Earth once in about 80,000 years….99942 Apophis.