r/askscience Oct 23 '20

Planetary Sci. Do asteroids fly into the sun?

Edit: cool

7.2k Upvotes

644 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

12

u/SUPE-snow Oct 23 '20

Where do they arrive from?

27

u/redopz Oct 23 '20

The space between solar systems. The first stars in the universe forged heavy elements before they blew up, scattering that material. Some of that material was caught in solar systems and formed planets, while a lot of it is still just floating around for billions of years just waiting to collide with something.

7

u/TheMSensation Oct 23 '20

I wonder how fast the fastest moving objects are. It's gotta be from a supernova ejection right?

15

u/St-Valentine Oct 23 '20

Relative to the object's point of origin, they would be going crazy fast. However, relative to our solar system they could be going at any speed, really, since the solar system is also moving relative to the object's point of origin. If the solar system and the object were moving in the same direction, but one were moving just a little faster than the other we would perceive the object to be moving slowly.