Asteroid Belt


  • Roughly 2 million rocks between Mars and Jupiter.
  • Largest object, Ceres, is about 1000km across, but most objects are much, much smaller.
  • Only a few are 'planets'.
  • Only contains about 0.02% the mass of the Earth

  • Originally contained much more stuff.

  • But, it lost most mass, but how? Collisions or dynamics?

  • See lots of evidence for collisions: