Speculation and our solar system

[Kessie]

I was reading this article about Nasa's findings about the asteroid Vesta:

www.accuweather.com/en/outdoor-articles/astronomy/nasa-video-reveals-huge-astero/66327

"A new video from a NASA spacecraft shows the huge asteroid Vesta's complex surface in dazzling and colorful detail.

The video drapes high-resolution false color images snapped by NASA's Dawn probe over a 3-D model of Vesta constructed from the spacecraft's observations. Dawn has been orbiting Vesta — at 330 miles (530 kilometers) wide the second-largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — since last July.

During its time at Vesta, Dawn has confirmed that the enormous space rock is actually an ancient protoplanet — a planetary building block left over from the solar system's earliest days. If Vesta had formed nearer to the sun instead of out in the asteroid belt near Jupiter, it may have been incorporated into a rocky planet like Earth or Venus."

Or, if you're operating from the assumption that the universe is a young place, maybe Vesta is the remains of a planet that got completely, totally destroyed and is now the asteroid belt.

Hmm. Speculative fiction story, anyone?

[myrthman]

Interesting. I have a "planet" in my sci-fi universe that, long ago, broke up into a space archipelago. The natives survived, developed a myth that their planet was once a giant egg, and for generations have been searching the stars for this creature. Over the course of time, the society splits into two primary factions: those that honor the myth as mere story, naming cities and ships after elements of it, but have given up on ever finding conclusive proof; and those that hold the myth as truth and continue to seek the great beast.

I will have to dig more into Vesta. Thanks for the info!