Why are there so many asteroids in the Solar System?

What is in the solar system? An astronomer once cleverly answered: "A large planet family, a family of asteroids".

This statement captures the heart of the matter. Only 9 major asteroids have been discovered in the Solar System, since 1801 when the first asteroid was discovered until the late 90s of the twentieth century. Asteroids were numbered more than 8000 stars. There are many more asteroids waiting to be discovered.

Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lies many asteroids.

Little brothers of this great planet, how much in fact? According to statistics, the total number of about 50,000. The vast majority of them are in motion between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter, concentrated from the Sun from 2.06 to 3.65 astronomical units. This region of the solar system is called the "asteroid belt".

Why is Mars and Jupiter orbiting so many asteroids?
This problem has been posed to astronomers for 200 years, but so far there has been no universally accepted response.

Theory is often referred to as the "explosion theory" . The theory says that the asteroid belt was originally from a large planet like Earth or Mars, and later for some reason the giant planet exploded, debris turned into asteroids. planet. But where did the source of the energy that exploded the planet came from? How could the debris splatter into asteroids like today? That theory could not be explained.

Someone put forward another opinion, saying that in the original space, there existed dozens of asteroids with a diameter of several hundred kilometers. During the long rotation in the solar system, it is difficult to avoid colliding with each other, even many times, thus forming different large and small asteroids and colorful, colorful shapes like today . The collision theory also has incomplete places. If you say there are dozens of such large bodies moving between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter, it's like in the Pacific Ocean how many fish swim, where do you get the chance to collide so much?

In recent years, there has been a popular theory of relativity called "semi-finished theory" . The idea is that in the primordial nebula, when the solar system began to form, because of the disturbance of Jupiter and other unknown factors, this region of space was inherently not many objects. further reducing, so that these objects can not form asteroids but can only form "semi-finished products", ie asteroids today.

In terms of asteroids, there are currently no suitable explanations, but astronomers have come to realize that studying asteroids has a very important meaning to elucidate the origin of asteroid. solar system.