asteroid

(noun)

A naturally occurring solid object, which is smaller than a planet and is not a comet, that orbits a star.

Related Terms

  • planet
  • geothermal
  • entropy

Examples of asteroid in the following topics:

  • Biodiversity Change through Geological Time

    • Hypotheses of climate change, asteroid impact, and volcanic eruptions have been argued.
    • The cause of this extinction is now understood to be the result of a cataclysmic impact of a large meteorite or asteroid off the coast of what is now the Yucatán Peninsula.
    • The researchers who discovered the iridium spike interpreted it as a rapid influx of iridium from space to the atmosphere (in the form of a large asteroid), rather than a slowing in the deposition of sediments during that period.
    • These researchers hypothesized that this iridium spike was caused by an asteroid impact that resulted in the K–Pg mass extinction.
  • Satellites

    • Natural satellites, often called moons (see ), are celestial bodies that orbit a larger body call a primary (often planet, though there are binary asteroids, too).
    • There are 76 objects in the asteroid belt with satellites (five with two satellites each), four Jupiter trojans, 39 near-Earth objects, and 14 Mars-crossers.
  • Heat Death

    • Stars are hotter than planets, for example, which are warmer than icy asteroids, which are warmer still than the vacuum of the space between them.
  • Kepler's First Law

    • Minor bodies such as comets an asteroids (discovered after Kepler's time) can have very large eccentricities.
  • Dynamics of UCM

    • The Moon's orbit about Earth, the orbits of planets, asteroids, meteors, and comets about the Sun are other examples of gravitational orbits.
  • Types of Sexual and Asexual Reproduction

    • This process occurs, for example, in many asteroid echinoderms through splitting of the central disk.
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