ASTEROIDS get a real kick from sunbathing. The irregular shape of these space rocks means that as infrared light from the sun bounces off them, they spin faster – perhaps eventually leading to the break-up of large asteroids into smaller bodies.
This effect, called YORP, is making the asteroid known as 1862 Apollo spin so much faster that it now completes one more revolution during its orbit of the sun than it did 40 years ago, astronomer Mikko Kaasalainen and colleagues report in Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature05614). The YORP effect was first predicted in 2000, but this is the first observational evidence to back it up.…
