Proud to be a co-author – Feeling cheered – Asteroid movies

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A publication ! I’m proud to be a co-author of a new paper on the origins of the shape of ‘rubble pipe’ asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu. It’s a long time since I had my name on a paper published in NATURE.

Claudia Manzoni and I were part of the team led by Patrick Michel which created these amazing simulations of the impacts of these loosely packed objects, leading to the ‘Spinning Top’ shape of the resulting asteroid. Of course our contribution (more Claudia than I) was the stereoscopic imaging. If you care to get into it, there’s a couple of very cool movies buried in the PDF version. Enjoy ! Nature.com

Nature

Nature

Nature

Feeling cheered up today by Anne Brummer’s amazing booklet for schools on how to care for hedgehogs. For more details visit Save Me Trust.

Bri and Amazing Grace booklet

Asteroid simulation movies – thanks Sarah [@blueprintblues] for diving into our ‘Nature’ paper and fishing out these movies. They are the work of Dr. Patrick Michel and his team, making virtual models in three dimensional space that show what might happen as a result of two asteroids colliding. In this model the asteroids are assumed to be loosely aggregated pebbles, or ‘rubble piles’, so when they collide, the ‘pebbles’ fly off in all directions, only to be pulled back in by the collective gravity of the ensemble. These movies, already masterpieces in their own right, visualised from two different viewpoints by Patrick’s simulation program, were made into stereoscopic masterpieces by my friend and astrostereoscopic colleague Claudia Manzoni. Brilliant !

Note: These are PARALLEL view stereo movies.

Brian May: Asteroid simulation movies – 28 May 2020
https://youtu.be/mwrFP-OO-84

Bri

@ brianmay.com