Youngest pair of asteroids in solar system spotted

Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun

The youngest known pair of asteroids in the solar system have been identified by astronomers.

The baby asteroids are thought to be 300 years old, which is ten times younger than the previous recorder holders.

It's exciting astronomy news because the asteroids pass really close to the Earth's orbit and they have properties that are hard to explain given their young age.

First spotted in 2019 by powerful telescopes, the two asteroids were found to have very similar orbits around the sun.

The largest of the two measures one kilometre in diameter and the other is half that size.

Despite splitting off from the same single parent asteroid, they are currently separated by one million kilometres.

The majority of asteroids in the solar system are in an area between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt.

However, these asteroids are called Near Earth Asteroids because, as the name suggests, their orbits bring them nearer the Earth.

Petr Fatka, from the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, led the study and described the finding as very significant.

"It's very exciting to find such a young asteroid pair that was formed only about 300 years ago, which was like this morning —not even yesterday — in astronomical timescales," he said.

The question the astronomers can't work out is how the baby asteroids formed.

To fully answer this question, there will need to be a lot more observations. However, this will have to wait for more than a decade.

"To have a better idea about what process caused the disruption of the parent body, we have to wait until 2033 when both objects will be within the reach of our telescopes again," Fatka explained.