Space Shredder: Sun May Be Tearing Asteroids Apart

With a cloud of trailing debris, a rocky object known as 3200 Phaethon straddles the line between asteroid and comet. New research suggests that the sun may be slowly shredding Phaethon to pieces due to its close orbit. "Phaethon may be a breakup in slow motion," Paul Wiegert, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, said at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Pasadena, California.