in basic detail.
it is between mars & jupiter.
any ideas about this 
the asteroid belt
Moderators: mahlemiut, seymour, QRS, BBH
the asteroid belt
in basic detail.
it is between mars & jupiter.
any ideas about this 
Re: the asteroid belt
tar wrote:
in basic detail.
it is between mars & jupiter.
Asteroids are primoridal objects left over from the formation of the Solar System. While some have suggested that they are the remains of a protoplanet that was destroyed in a massive collision long ago, the prevailing view is that asteroids are leftover rocky matter that never successfully coalesced into a planet. Most planetary astronomers still believe that the planets of the Solar System formed from a nebula of gas and dust that coalesced into a disk of dust grains around the developing Sun. Within the disk, tiny dust grains coagulated into larger and larger bodies called planetesimals, many of which eventually accreted into planets over a period as long as a 100 million years. However, beyond the orbit of Mars, gravitational interference from Jupiter's huge mass prevented protoplanetary bodies from growing larger than about 1,000 km (620 miles).
It has been estimated that the total mass of the Main Asteroid Belt may total less than 1/1000th of the mass of the Earth. Indeed, if all asteroids down to the size of meter- or yard-sized boulders or less were combined together, the resulting object would measure less than 1,300 to 1,500 km (810 to 930 miles) across, which is less than one third to one half the diameter of the Earth's Moon. The Main Asteroid Belt is only a small remnant of the material that once resided in the region between Mars and Jupiter, but once may have contained between two to 10 Earth masses of material. However, T-Tauri-type Solar winds from a very young Sun, gravitational perturbations from Jupiter developing nearby, and dynamic interactions with other large planetesimals and protoplanets during the first 100 million years, and continuing collisional grinding over the following 4.5 billion years after the formation of the planets, interfered with the formation of a substantial, single planet and caused most of the mass to be lost to the rest of the Solar System and interstellar space.
John Cunningham (JTC)
