Sans the lone satellite Luna, our planet Earth had cleared debris and other close by space orbiters. How do you find the volume of this cleared neighborhood around the Earth's orbit?
1 Answer
As of now, the maximum is
Explanation:
Meteoroids that become meteors in the Earth's atmosphere and
meteorites, after hitting Earth's surface, did not have orbits around
the Sun. Yet, their sources , asteroids and comets orbit the Sun. The
elongation of these orbits make their periods long. However, quite
many of them come close to us, near the respective perihelion.
When they are very close, they are included in the list of Near Earth
Objects (NEO). Even here, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory findings
(http://geo.jpl.nasa.gov) showed just one asteroid (2016 RB1) came
as NEO, at about 40000 km from the Earth. Another (2015 TB 145 )
came a little beyond Moon's maximum apogee distance of
405400 km.
In view of all these findings, it is reasonable to admit that the Earth
is yet to clear some NEOs like the asteroid (2016 RB1) that had
come as close as 40000 km to the Earth. For this limit, the
maximum volume of the cleared neighborhood is that of a torus of
central radius 1 AU and cross-sectional radius 40000 km, nearly.
This volume is
Upon further visits of asteroids to closer than 40000 km, this torus
might become narrower in cross section.
Disambiguation note:
For planets, stars and galactic centers. there is an edge in the form
of a torus within which space bodies that enter into the torus would
be drawn ( attracted ) into the fold of the center of attraction. These
objects might disintegrate before merging into the source of
attraction.
For the star Sun, this torus cross-sectional radius is the distance of
Mercury from the Sun, 0.38 AU, Its central radius is the Milky-Way-
Sun arm that is nearly 27000 light years.long. Here, the
disintegration of comets, like Love Joy C/2011W3 in Dec 2011, is not
included, in view of the weak structure of such comets that loose
mass or disintegrate, at high speeds, near perihelion.
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