Asteroid Bennu may well have gotten its spinning best form from landslides

Asteroids that are shaped like spinning tops, this kind of as Bennu and Ryugu, may perhaps have been slowed down and formed by a sequence of big landslides

By Leah Crane

Massive landslides on the asteroid Bennu and other, very similar place rocks may possibly have been far far more vital to their evolution than researchers earlier realised. They may have offered these asteroids their odd spinning-top designs, as well as slowed their rotation and served avert them from falling aside.

Bennu is most probably a rubble-pile asteroid, that means that instead of just one massive rock, it is created of a lot of chunks of rock held jointly by gravity. This signifies that it is not significantly difficult for even a somewhat tiny influence by …