Across the Earth, every night, thousands of automated stargazers are waiting to take pictures of shooting stars. I am one of the scientists who study these meteors.
Most movies and news alerts focus on large asteroids that could destroy the Earth. And your phones notifies you every few months that an object nine washing machines wide is going to just narrowly skim past. However, the small dust and rubble that enter our atmosphere daily tell an equally interesting story.
In a study published in March 2026, I searched through millions of meteor observations collected by all-sky camera networks based in Canada, Japan, California and Europe and found a small, recently formed cluster. The 282 meteors associated with this cluster tell the story of an asteroid that got a little too close to the sun.
Meteor formation
When a sand-sized crumb of space rock hits our atmosphere, it heats up almost instantly, vaporizing its surface layer and turning it into an electrically charged gas. The whole fragment starts to glow — this is what we call a meteor. If the object is larger, like a boulder, and brighter, it’s called a bolide or a fireball. On average, these objects hit our atmosphere going over 15 miles per second. For small dust or sand-sized objects, the whole process lasts only a fraction of a second before they completely disappear.
Most of these sand-sized fragments in the solar system originate from comets — cold, icy objects from the outer reaches of the solar system. As comets pass by the sun, their icy components turn to gas, releasing tons of dust. This is why comets are often called “dirty snowballs” and appear fuzzy in telescopic images.
Asteroids, on the other hand, are leftovers from the early solar system that formed closer to the sun. They are dry and rocky, and do not have the same ices that give comets their characteristic tails.
What does it mean to be active?
Astronomers call an asteroid or comet “active” when it sheds dust, gas or larger fragments. This activity is caused by some external force on the object in space, like heat from the sun, a small impact, or when asteroids spin too fast and fly apart.
Understanding and identifying activity helps scientists better understand how these objects change over time.
For comets, sublimation of ices — when solid ice turns directly into gas, skipping the liquid phase — is the primary culprit. However, for asteroids, the reason for activity can vary greatly.
For example, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched into space to study an asteroid named Bennu, saw activity from its surface, with heat stress and small impacts among the leading explanations.
Other sources for asteroid activity include breakup when an asteroid spins too fast, tidal forces ripping apart asteroids during close encounters with a planet, or gas release.
Researchers most commonly search for activity using telescopes. Astronomers can look for a “tail” or fuzziness around the object. This tail is a clear sign that there is gas and dust around the body. But there is another way to search for activity — meteor showers.
Finding hidden asteroids via meteor showers
The most famous active asteroid is 3200 Phaethon. It is the parent body of the Geminid meteor shower that occurs every year in mid-December. During past close approaches with the sun, Phaethon released vast amounts of dust and larger fragments. These morsels of Phaethon have spread out along its entire orbit over time, leading to the present Geminid meteor stream.
Each meteor shower we observe occurs when the Earth passes through one of these debris streams. So if astronomers can detect meteor showers, they can also be used to find active objects in space.
At first, debris shed by an asteroid or comet travels closely together. Imagine squeezing a single drop of food dye into a moving stream of water: Initially, the dye stays in a tight, concentrated cloud. But as it flows, the water’s swirling currents pull at the dye, causing it to spread out and fade.
In space, the gravitational tugs from passing planets act like those currents. They pull on the individual meteor fragments in slightly different ways, causing the once-tight stream to gradually drift apart until it completely dilutes into the background dust of our solar system.
The discovery of a rock-comet
In a study published in March 2026 in the Astrophysical Journal, I used millions of observations of meteors to search for recent, unknown activity from asteroids near the Earth. I found one clear cluster of 282 meteors that stood out.
What makes this discovery so exciting is that we are essentially witnessing a hidden asteroid being baked to bits. This newly confirmed meteor stream follows an extreme orbit that plunges almost five times closer to the Sun than Earth does.
Based on how these meteors break apart when they hit our atmosphere, we can tell they are moderately fragile, but tougher than stuff from comets. This finding tells us that intense solar heat is literally cracking the asteroid’s surface, baking out trapped gases and causing it to crumble. This is likely a major source of past Phaethon activity and the main reason the meteorites on Earth are so diverse.
The search for the source
Why does finding a hidden, crumbling asteroid matter? Meteor observations act as a uniquely sensitive probe that lets us study objects that are completely invisible to traditional telescopes.
Beyond solving astronomical mysteries, analyzing this debris helps us understand the physical evolution of asteroids and comets in our solar system. More importantly, it reveals hidden populations of near-Earth asteroids, which is vital information for planetary defense.
The new meteor shower’s parent asteroid remains elusive. However, NASA’s NEO Surveyor mission, launching in 2027, offers a promising solution. This space telescope, dedicated to planetary defense and the discovery of dark, hazardous, sun-approaching asteroids, will be the ideal tool for searching for the showe’s origin.
This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Published Date : 2026-04-11 14:00:00
Source : www.livescience.com
