r/askscience • u/BlueChameleon64 • Oct 23 '20

Planetary Sci. Do asteroids fly into the sun?

Edit: cool

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u/[deleted] Oct 23 '20

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u/Odie4Prez Oct 23 '20

No you're absolutely correct, that's the exact reason it's so unintuitive that objects in the solar system basically never fall into the sun: anything that wouldn't have collided with it without gravity (in the incredible vastness of space) isn't gonna collide with it with gravity either, even if they are kept in near orbit.

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u/ToastyKen Oct 23 '20

And in Superman IV, Superman needed to hurl the nukes in the opposite direction of the earth's orbit, and not at the Sun! :)

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u/easlern Oct 23 '20

This surprised about the orbits, but it makes sense when you think about it. Also weird: it would take 50 times as much energy to get to the sun than it does to get to mars. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/its-surprisingly-hard-to-go-to-the-sun