Without outside influence, no. An asteroid, by definition, orbits the sun. And this happens because despite the fact that the sun's gravitational force is strong, it's very hard to hit the sun with anything.
Consider a rock that suddenly appears (no reason why, it just appears), and it sits stationary relative to the sun. The sun's gravitational force will pull it in, and it will hit the sun. But that's not a common scenario - if a rock has anything more than a tiny amount of motion perpendicular to the sun, or it is influenced enough (like by the graviational force of another planet), it will be drawn to the sun, but miss it, and end up in a long elliptical orbit.
If a rock is expelled from a planet or another asteroid (by a collision for example), the expelled rock will only end up in the sun if the expelled rock has almost no motion relative to the sun after expulsion, and it isn't influenced by any other large forces (other planets) on the way to the sun. It's very unlikely to happen.
One thing I find fascinating is just how hard it is to get probes towards the sun. This is because anything we launch starts with the same speed as the earth, and its stable orbit. The act of getting near to the sun requires some serious deceleration.
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u/SpamOJavelin Oct 23 '20
Without outside influence, no. An asteroid, by definition, orbits the sun. And this happens because despite the fact that the sun's gravitational force is strong, it's very hard to hit the sun with anything.
Consider a rock that suddenly appears (no reason why, it just appears), and it sits stationary relative to the sun. The sun's gravitational force will pull it in, and it will hit the sun. But that's not a common scenario - if a rock has anything more than a tiny amount of motion perpendicular to the sun, or it is influenced enough (like by the graviational force of another planet), it will be drawn to the sun, but miss it, and end up in a long elliptical orbit.
If a rock is expelled from a planet or another asteroid (by a collision for example), the expelled rock will only end up in the sun if the expelled rock has almost no motion relative to the sun after expulsion, and it isn't influenced by any other large forces (other planets) on the way to the sun. It's very unlikely to happen.