Baptistina family

Baptistina family

The Baptistina family is an asteroid family that was likely produced by the breakup of an asteroid 170 km (110 miles) across 160 million years ago following an impact with a smaller body. The largest presumed remnant of this parent asteroid is 298 Baptistina.

Many mountain-sized fragments from the collision would have leaked into the inner solar system through orbital resonances with Mars and Jupiter, causing a prolonged series of asteroid impacts between 100 and 50 million years ago. The Baptistina "family" may consist of uncommon carbonaceous chondrite asteroids and meteoroids in similar orbits. Chromium concentrations in 65-million-year-old sediment layers at the K–T boundary on Earth suggest that the impactor that gouged out Chicxulub Crater belonged to this group. [cite journal| last=Bottke|first= WF|coauthors= Vokrouhlický D Nesvorný D.|year=2007|title=An asteroid breakup 160 Myr ago as the probable source of the K/T impactor|journal=Nature| volume= 449|pages=48–53|doi=10.1038/nature06070] [cite web| url=http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/9588922.html| title=Asteroids Smash, Dinosaurs Duck| author=Govert Schilling ("Sky & Telescope")| accessdate=September 5| accessyear=2007| ] It has been speculated that the impactor that produced the lunar crater Tycho 108 million years ago was also a member of the group.

References

External links

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6980468.stm (BBC News) "Space pile-up 'condemned dinos'"] 5 September 2007


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