Asteroids – the planet that never was

Spread mostly between Mars and Jupiter but scattered haphazard throughout the solar system, the asteroids look like a rubbish dump. But many astronomers believe that asteroids are rocky leftovers from the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago.

One theory is that after the Big Bang, dust particles came together to form celestial objects through a process called accretion – smaller objects came together with other small objects, creating larger space rocks.

Some of these clumps of rocks were able to grow large enough to develop sufficient gravity to became planets. Many others were held back from getting together by Jupiter’s gravitation force and became asteroids.

In this Study Group John Worley will talk about the various types of asteroid, and speculate on the possibility that the current hunger for ‘green energy’ means that they will become a valuable resource – to be mined by robots when we have sucked up all the Earth’s easily-available resources.