Millions of asteroids orbit between the planets Mars and Jupiter in the so-called main belt. Until now, the smallest celestial bodies that researchers have been able to identify there had a diameter of around one kilometre. Now an international team led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA has found a way to detect much smaller objects. With their new approach, the researchers have detected more than a hundred previously unknown asteroids with a diameter of between 10 metres and several hundred metres. Master's student Tobias Hoffmann from the Department of Medical Radiation Physics and Space Environment at the University of Oldenburg was also involved in the work, which was published today in the scientific journal Nature. The team believes that the new method could be useful for identifying asteroids that could potentially pose a threat to Earth.
The Oldenburg physicist contributed an improved method for measuring the size of asteroids, which he had developed in his master's thesis with Prof Dr Björn Poppe at the University of Oldenburg. The method eliminates systematic deviations in brightness measurements that had previously distorted asteroid size measurements. By comparing them with already known objects whose size he had precisely determined in his work, it was also possible to check the diameters of the new objects. Hoffmann recently presented the method in a separate article in the journal Icarus. ‘We are very proud that Tobias Hoffmann's work is being used and recognised at such a high level,’ emphasises Poppe.
Press release by Oldenburg University