Brittle asteroids may result in reduced impact threat

New Scientist : Asteroids and comets more than 1 km across could devastate Earth if they were to hit the planet. However, Desireé Cotto-Figueroa of Arizona State University in Tempe and her colleagues say that we may not have as much to worry about from asteroids as we thought. Cotto-Figueroa’s team tested centimeter-sized cubes from meteorites recovered on the ground. By crushing the samples, the researchers found that the asteroids were nearly as brittle as concrete, which means they are much weaker than most Earth rocks. The researchers extrapolated their measurements of the samples up to much larger scales to calculate the break-up rate for different sizes and types of meteorites. The calculations suggest that rocky asteroids are much more likely to break apart in Earth’s atmosphere and turn into a spray of fireballs instead of remaining whole and creating large impacts.