You know, it is, uh, it's one thing to lose your
car keys, right? Oh yeah, definitely. Or maybe
like your phone and the couch cushions. I mean,
we've all been there. Right, it happens to the
best of us. You retrace your steps, you check
your pockets, maybe you even pat down the dog.
Just in case. Exactly. But I want you to imagine
trying to keep track of something the size of
an actual mountain. That is a very different
scale. Right. Now imagine that mountain is moving
at tens of thousands of miles an hour just hurtling
through the pitch blackness of space and then
we just lose it. Yes, you have absolutely no
idea where it went. I mean it sounds like the
The inciting incident of a science fiction disaster
movie, honestly. It really does. Because we naturally
tend to view our map of the solar system as this
incredibly precise clockwork model. You know,
like every planet and asteroid is ticking along
a perfectly predictable track. Right, like a
neat little diagram in a textbook. Exactly. But
the reality is far messier. It is remarkably
easy to completely misplace a giant celestial
body. Which is terrifying. But anyway, welcome
to today's deep dive. We have a fascinating Wikipedia
article on the table today detailing the very
real, very stressful phenomenon of lost minor
planets. It is a wild topic. It really is. And
our mission for this deep dive is to figure out
exactly how scientists can somehow lose a massive
rock in space, the absolute genius level astronomical
detective work required to find them again, and
why keeping track of these cosmic ones. is so
incredibly crucial for the safety of everyone
listening right now. Yeah, to put the scale of
this issue into perspective for you, astronomers
have observed and cataloged over 700 ,000 minor
planets. 700 ,000. Right. But based on the historical
data and observation records, The true number
of lost asteroids. Wait, lost, like entirely
missing? Yes, ones we've definitely seen through
a telescope but can no longer find. That number
might be over 150 ,000. 150 ,000 missing mountains.
That is, wow. OK, let's unpack this. Because
I feel like we need to start with the absolute
basics, so we're all on the same page. Good idea.
What does it actually mean for a minor planet
to be, quote unquote, lost in astronomy? Because,
to be clear to you listening, it doesn't mean
the asteroid exploded like the Death Star, right?
No, no. So it slipped into a wormhole or something.
Right, the rock is very much still there. Okay,
phew. In the realm of astronomy, a minor planet
is considered lost when contemporary observers
simply cannot find it because its location is
too uncertain to target with a modern telescope.
So we just don't know where to point the camera.
Exactly. Because telescopes, they do not work
like a wide -angle camera lens taking a picture
of the whole sky. They have incredibly narrow,
hyper -focused fields of view. Like zooming way,
way in. Right. It is like looking at the sky
through a drinking straw. Oh, that's a great
way to picture it. Yeah. So if your mathematical
model doesn't tell you exactly which millimeter
of the sky to point that straw at, you are not
going to see the object. Oh, wait. How do we
get the math so wrong? I mean, if we saw it once,
shouldn't we know where it's going? Math fails
when we lack what astronomers call the observation
arc. The observation arc. Okay, what is that?
It's the total length of time over which we actively
track an object. So if an asteroid is observed
only briefly, say, for just two or three days
before the weather turns bad. Oh, like a cloudy
night ruins the whole thing. Exactly. Or the
telescope is assigned to another project, we
simply don't get enough data points to plot its
full elliptical orbit around the sun accurately.
So it just slips away. Right. After that brief
window, it might become unobservable. Its orbit
might take it further away from Earth, causing
it to become too faint to see. Or I guess it
could go behind the Sun. Yes, its path might
take it too close to the Sun's glare. meaning
it is only technically in the sky during the
daytime, completely washed out by sunlight. You
know, I was trying to figure out how to visualize
this observation arc problem for the deep dive,
and it feels a bit like capturing a two -second
video of a car speeding down a highway. Okay,
I like that. And from that tiny two -second clip,
you are tasked with predicting exactly which
parking spot in which city that exact car will
be sitting in five years later. That analogy
perfectly captures the geometry of the problem.
A two -second clip gives you a rough speed and
a rough heading. That's it. Right. It tells you
absolutely nothing about the underlying variables.
Yeah. Is the driver going to take the next exit?
Are they stopping for gas? Will they hit a traffic
jam? Exactly. In the vastness of space, a short
observation arc translates to millions of miles
of positional uncertainty. Millions of miles.
And the scale of this uncertainty is quantified
by astronomers using a condition code. According
to the source, there are about 30 ,000 unnumbered
bodies floating out there right now with a condition
code of U equals 9. U equals nine. That sounds
ominous, like some kind of DEFCON level. What
does a nine actually mean? It is the absolute
highest possible uncertainty rating for an orbit
determination on a scale from zero to nine. So
zero is good. Yes. A zero would mean we know
exactly where the object is and where it will
be for decades. A nine means we saw it sometimes
decades ago. The observation arc was vanishingly
small. And today we have absolutely no mathematical
confidence in its location. None at all. None.
And beyond those 30 ,000, U equals equals nine
bodies, there are also over 1 ,000 near -Earth
objects. Wait, near -Earth objects? Yes, meaning
their orbits bring them uncomfortably close to
our own planetary neighborhood. Oh, great. And
over 1 ,000 of those have an observation arc
of just one or two days. OK, let's unpack this.
Because if we have thousands of giant rocks buzzing
around our cosmic neighborhood, and we literally
have a U9 level of no idea where they are, we
obviously need a way to fix them out. We absolutely
do. So how do we ever find them again? I mean,
if the sky is that massive and the telescope's
view is like looking through a straw, searching
for them sounds mathematically impossible. It
is incredibly difficult, but the process is called
recovery. and it relies heavily on large -scale
automated surveys scanning the sky night after
night. Like robotic telescopes just taking pictures.
Essentially, yes. Often, a completely separate
modern astronomical survey will be mapping a
region of the sky and will serendipitously observe
an object moving against the background stars.
Just by pure luck. A lot of it is luck. And because
they don't immediately know what it is, they
log it into the database as a new discovery.
But wait, I'm going to push back on this a bit
for you listening. If the orbit of the lost rock
was highly uncertain, like a U9, how can we be
absolutely sure this allegedly new rock from
Tuesday night is actually the old lost rock from,
say, 1995? That is a very valid question. Aren't
we just essentially guessing that they match
up because they look vaguely similar? No, it
is a rigorous mathematical process, not a guess.
When scientists notice that the orbital elements
of a new object look suspiciously similar to
the rough historical estimates of a lost asteroid,
they do something incredible. What do they do?
They take the precise modern orbit of the new
object and calculate its trajectory backwards
in time. Backwards. They literally run the clock
in reverse to see if the physics dictate that
this new object would have been in the exact
coordinates where the lost object was originally
recorded decades ago. Oh, like rewinding a video
to see where the car started. Exactly. What's
fascinating here is how this backward calculation
transforms our understanding of the object. Imagine
a massive tangled tapestry. The new observation
is a single thread you hold in your hand. The
old observation is a loose thread on the other
side of the room. By calculating the orbit backward,
you are tracing that specific thread through
the entire chaotic pattern of the tapestry. When
those two ends meet perfectly, You haven't just
identified the object. You've connected them.
You have miraculously extended its observation
arc. Suddenly, instead of a two -day arc from
2025, you have a 30 -year observation arc connecting
1995 to 2025. Oh, wow. That acts like a zipper
connecting the two timelines. Precisely. That
long arc locks the orbit into place with absolute
undeniable precision. And what's wild to me is
that sometimes astronomers don't even wait for
a new telescope to stumble across a lost rock.
They dig through old photos. Yes, precovery.
The source outlines this concept of precovery,
which I love. It's like discovery, but you're
discovering it in the past. Precovery is effectively
astronomical archaeology. Archaeology, yes. Once
you have a newly discovered asteroid and a fairly
decent initial orbit, you run that mathematical
model backward. But instead of matching it to
a known lost object you physically go to the
astronomical archives like actual filing cabinets
Well, you pull out old dusty glass photographic
plates from 30 40 or 50 years ago Plates that
were taken for entirely different experiments
to see if your asteroid happened to be photobombing
the background Which is exactly what happened
with the incredibly named asteroid 7 -7 -9 -6
Jarosimem. A classic example. Right. This rock
was officially discovered in 1996 by astronomers
in the Czech Republic. But once they locked down
its orbit and ran the math backward, they realized
they could trace its path through history. They
went right back to the archives. They checked
the archives and found it hiding in plain sight
in old photos from an Italian observatory taken
in 1973 and an Australian observatory in the
It is amazing what you can find when you know
exactly where to look. It was right there, hanging
out in the background of the universe for 23
years before anyone actually noticed it. The
amount of undiscovered data sitting in our physical
archives is staggering. However, applying this
backward -tracing math has a major limitation.
Oh, what's the catch? As elegant as the physics
are, The calculations become incredibly unreliable
when you transition from tracking asteroids to
tracking comets. Oh, right. The comets. The source
specifically highlights the nightmare of non
-gravitational forces. This part of the source
blew my mind. Because I always thought gravity
was the only thing steering the ship out there.
It is for asteroids. Asteroids are mostly inert
chunks of rock and metal. Their paths are dictated
entirely by the gravitational pull of the Sun
and the planets. Right, standard physics. But
comets, conversely, are composed largely of ice
and dust. When a comet's orbit brings it closer
to the sun, the rising temperature causes that
ice to sublimate. Which means it turns directly
from a solid into a gas, right? Correct. And
this violent reaction creates powerful jets of
gas shooting out of the comet's nucleus. Which
act like tiny, completely unpredictable rocket
thrusters. They literally alter the comet's physical
trajectory, pushing it off its gravity -defined
course. You cannot run the math backward on a
comet with perfect precision because you have
absolutely no way of knowing exactly when, in
what direction, or how hard those microscopic
gas jets were firing 40 years ago. It's like
trying to predict the exact path of a deflating
balloon zooming around a living room. It's just
inherently chaotic. The chaos creates a massive
headache for orbital dynamicists. And that chaos
becomes infinitely more concerning when those
unpredictable trajectories intersect with our
own. Here's where it gets really interesting.
Because losing a random chunk of ice billions
of miles away is a frustrating math problem,
sure. Right. But what happens when the mountain
we lost is potentially headed right for us? The
stakes go from an academic puzzle to a literal
planetary survival scenario. It is the ultimate
high stakes situation. Let's look at the near
-Earth asteroid 1950 DA. This is one of the most
famous case studies in the source. Very famous.
It was discovered in 1950. Astronomers watched
it for exactly 17 days and then poof! It was
gone. They did not have a long enough observation
arc to plot the orbit accurately. It was completely
missing until December 31st, the year 2000, exactly
a half century later. And once they recovered
1950 DA on New Year's Eve in 2000, they used
that 50 -year gap to extend the observation arc,
locked in the orbital mechanics with incredible
precision, and projected the path forward. And
what did they find? The resulting data is chilling.
This specific asteroid has a 1 in 4 ,000 chance.
Which is a 0 .025 % probability. Yes, a 1 in
4 ,000 chance of impacting Earth on a highly
specific date, March 16th, 2880. That level of
precision is terrifyingly specific. 2880. Let
me just put a pin in my calendar for that one.
But honestly, a 1 in 4 ,000 chance actually sounds
kind of high when the consequence is a global
catastrophe. In the realm of planetary defense,
1 in 4 ,000 is a highly significant probability.
The saving grace is that we know exactly where
1950 DA is today. Right. It's not lost anymore.
Exactly. We have over 800 years to track its
movements, measure any deviations, and engineer
a deflection mission if it truly threatens us.
The scenarios that genuinely keep planetary defense
experts awake at night are the massive objects
that are still lost right now. Which brings us
to a rock known as 1979XB. I read the stats on
this one and immediately felt a little stressed
out for all of us. Understandably. 1979XB is
a 660 -meter asteroid. Huge. To visualize that,
it is over 2 ,000 feet wide, roughly the size
of the Pentagon. Oh my gosh. An impact from an
object that size is easily large enough to wipe
out a major metropolitan area or trigger a devastating
global tsunami. It was observed for a mere 3
.9 days back in 1979. 3 .9 days. And it's never
been seen since. And according to the source,
it currently sits with the fourth highest cumulative
rating on the Palermo scale. Now, I know the
Palermo scale measures impact hazards, but can
you explain why this specific lost rock is ranked
so incredibly high? Because it has potential
close approaches to Earth in 2056, 2086, 2102,
and 2113, But the actual mathematical odds of
it hitting up in 2056 are listed at 1 in 5 .3
million. Right. That is a tiny probability. Why
is it ranked number 4 on the hazard scale if
the odds of it hitting us are 1 in 5 million?
The Palermo scale is an ingenious metric because
it doesn't just look at the raw probability of
an impact. It weighs the probability against
the kinetic energy, the destructive power of
the asteroid. So size matters. Immensely. A 10
-foot rock with a 90 % chance of hitting Earth
scores very low because it'll just burn up in
the atmosphere. Right, a nice little shooting
star. Exactly. But a 660 -meter monster like
1979XB scores incredibly high. even with low
odds, because the consequences of an impact are
catastrophic. Furthermore, those 1 in 5 .3 million
odds are actually a symptom of our ignorance.
How so? Because we only have a 3 .9 -day observation
arc from 40 years ago, the cone of probability
for where this asteroid might be in 2056 is tens
of millions of miles wide. The cone of probability
being the mathematical projection of all the
possible places the rock could be, given the
uncertainty of the map. Correct. As time goes
on, that cone gets wider and wider. Earth happens
to be sitting squarely inside that enormous cone
for the year 2056. Oh, that's not good. We mathematically
cannot rule out an impact. But because the cone
is so astronomically huge, the specific percentage
chance of the asteroid hitting the exact tiny
coordinate where Earth will be is mathematically
diluted. I see. This raises an important question
regarding how we allocate global astronomical
resources. What do you mean? Well, if you have
limited telescope time and funding, do you focus
on scanning the deep sky for new undiscovered
threats? Or do you dedicate months of telescope
time staring at an empty patch of sky hoping
to recover a 600 meter lost rock that might be
there? just to shrink its cone of probability.
It is the ultimate needle in a cosmic haystack.
And what makes it worse is that sometimes, even
when we know exactly where a rock is, the physics
of the universe step in and scramble the math.
They absolutely do. The story of asteroid 2007
WD -5 is the perfect example of this. Ah, the
Apollo Class Mars Crosser. Yes. And for you listening,
an Apollo Class asteroid means its orbit actually
crosses Earth's orbit, which makes it inherently
relevant to our survival. But this one is also
a Mars Crosser, meaning it is playing in traffic
across multiple planetary lanes. A very dangerous
orbit. Very. It's about 50 meters wide, discovered
in 2007. Early on, scientists were on the edge
of their seats because they calculated it had
a 1 in 25 chance of impacting Mars. 1 in 25.
1 in 25. People thought they were going to get
to watch a live explosive asteroid impact on
the Martian surface. It generated an enormous
amount of excitement in the scientific community.
I bet. But as astronomers gathered more observations
and refined the observation arc, the cone of
probability shrank and the odds of a direct hit
dropped. It ended up missing Mars. But barely.
Right. It missed the planet by just 21 ,000 kilometers.
It passed only 16 ,000 kilometers from Mars's
tiny moon, Deimos. That is a cosmic hair's breadth.
It is. And that spectacular near miss created
an entirely new problem. When an object passes
that intimately close to a planetary body, the
planet's immense gravity exerts a tremendous
pulling force on it. Like a magnet. In orbital
mechanics, we call this a gravity assist or a
slingshot effect. Which physically bends the
asteroid's trajectory. The irony of this is just
incredible to me. It really is. It passed so
incredibly close to Mars that the gravitational
bending of its path essentially invalidated all
of the previous math we had done on it. Completely
erased it. By narrowly avoiding a fiery impact
with Mars, the gravity scrambled its orbit so
dramatically that we lost the asteroid entirely.
We have no idea where 2007 WD -5 is today. It
serves as a perfect demonstration of the chaotic
dynamics governing the solar system. You can
have the most precise mathematical models in
the world, but a slight gravitational tug from
a passing planet changes the entire equation
permanently. Now, to be fair, sometimes losing
an asteroid isn't about existential dread or
gravity assists. Sometimes it's just a giant
human error. Yes, that is also true. A bureaucratic
mix -up. An administrative identity crisis. The
history of minor planet discovery is unfortunately
full of these administrative nightmares. much
to the chagrin of the Minor Planet Center. They're
the organization tasked with keeping all these
records straight, right? Yes. And the saga of
the 1125 China mix -up is a classic example of
how messy human cataloging can be. I love this
story from the source. Okay. Put yourself in
the sky shoes. In 1928, an astronomer named Zhang
Yuze is studying in Chicago. He discovers a brand
new asteroid. A great achievement. Huge. He gets
the honor of naming it, so he names it China.
And the Minor Planet Center gives it the official
catalog number 11125. But then they lose it.
They lose it. They don't observe it long enough.
The arc is too short and it vanishes into the
dark. Fast forward nearly 30 years to 1957. The
Purple Mountain Observatory in China. discovers
a new asteroid. Okay. They search the catalogs.
They cannot find the old 1928 asteroid. So they
reach out to Zhang Yuze and ask if they can just
reuse his name. Since his rock is gone. Right.
He agrees. So this newly discovered 1957 asteroid
officially assumes the title of 1125 China. The
old 1928 rock is basically written off as a permanent
loss. But then, almost 30 years after that, in
1986, an astronomer discovers an asteroid. They
take the new data, they run the tapestry math
backward, and they realize they just found the
original lost asteroid from 1928. It was a shocking
realization. So now the Minor Planet Center has
two entirely different asteroids orbiting in
space, and they both technically have a historical
claim to the name and number 1125 China. It was
an absolute mess for the database maintainers.
You cannot simply overwrite or reuse catalog
numbers without causing systemic errors. Well,
what did they do? To fix the administrative nightmare,
they compromised. They allowed the 1957 asteroid
to keep the title 1125 China, and they took the
newly rediscovered original 1928 asteroid and
officially named it 3789 Zhonggu. Which brilliantly
is just the pinyin romanization of the Chinese
word for China. They literally named them both
China just using different linguistic formats
to keep the paperwork clean. I love that so much.
It was a very elegant solution. But at least
that rock actually existed in the sky. Let's
talk about the ultimate astronomical false positive,
the story of 330 Adelberta. Oh, this is a rather
embarrassing footnote in astronomical history
from 1892. Embarrassing is a good word for it.
An astronomer named Max Wolfe discovered what
he strongly believed was an asteroid. He formally
named it 330 Adelberta. And then, like so many
others we've discussed, it was lost. Typical.
And it remained lost for 90 years. Imagine doing
your job. publishing your findings, and it takes
90 years long after you're gone for people to
realize you made a massive mistake. Exactly.
For nine decades, astronomers occasionally tried
to recover Adelberta. Finally, in 1982, scientists
physically reviewed the original glass photographic
plates from 1892. And what did they find? Looking
closely at the emulsion, they realized the asteroid
never existed in the first place. He was literally
looking at stars. Yes. Max Wolfe had accidentally
measured two distinct overlapping images of faint
background stars and erroneously assumed the
dual smudges were a single moving asteroid. The
object was a complete phantom. So to clean up
the historical catalogs without leaving a glaring
blank spot at number 330, they quietly took the
name 330 Adelberta and reassigned it to a completely
different asteroid that had been discovered in
1910. They just recycled the name to hide the
mistake. Just nothing to see here, folks. 8 -old
Berta is perfectly fine. She just naturally migrated
to 1910. It was a pragmatic fix. And what's crazy
is that these imposter mix -ups are still happening
today. It's not just guys squinting at glass
plates in the 1800s. We have modern imposter
asteroids. We do. The modern imposter phenomenon
is largely a byproduct of human space exploration.
Take the object catalog as 6Q0B44E. Okay, what's
the story with this one? It was discovered in
2006 orbiting out beyond the moon. Through a
telescope it behaved exactly like a small minor
planet. It looked like a rock. Yes, but upon
closer spectroscopic inspection of its light
curves and its orbital dynamics, its properties
perfectly matched the density of artificial space
debris. It was literally our own spill trash
masquerading as a minor planet. Most likely,
a piece of an old rocket booster from an early
lunar mission. Because it was confirmed artificial,
it was stripped of any official minor planet
designation. And then, fittingly, we lost track
of the trash in 2007. But the trash came back!
It certainly appears so. In 2016, an object designated
XL8D89E was found on a strikingly similar orbit.
Astronomers strongly suspect it is the exact
same piece of debris. That's hilarious. And what
is truly remarkable is that this metallic object
experiences non -gravitational acceleration,
just like the icy comets we discussed earlier.
Wait, how does an empty metal tube of space trash
have non -gravitational acceleration? It doesn't
have ice sublimating into gas jets. No, it doesn't.
The leading theory is that the debris might have
had a very slow microscopic gas leak. Like a
punctured tire. Perhaps leftover pressurized
propellant or coolant. just enough of a microscopic
leak over a decade to act as a minuscule continuous
thruster. Oh wow. This slightly altered its orbit
and made it incredibly difficult for our models
to track. And sure enough, because of that unpredictable
acceleration, XL8D89E was lost again in 2018.
We literally cannot even keep track of our own
garbage in orbit. So to wrap up our tour of the
lost and found, let's look out as far as we possibly
can to the absolute extreme edge of our solar
system. Yes, if we connect this to the bigger
picture, the outer solar system is where the
concept of loss takes on a terrifyingly massive
scale. It really does. The trans -Neptunian object
2020 MK53 is a perfect example of this. extreme
frontier. This was discovered in 2020 by the
New Horizons team using a massive 8 .2 meter
telescope in Hawaii, and they observed it for
exactly three days before losing it. And when
an object is located in the trans -Neptunian
region billions of miles away, it moves incredibly
slowly against the background stars. Right. Three
days of observation is practically nothing. It
barely provides a millimeter of the tapestry
thread. Based on those three days, calculations
suggest it might be 160 astronomical units away
from the Sun. For you listening, an astronomical
unit is the distance from the Earth to the Sun,
so this rock is 160 times further away from the
Sun than we are. If that calculation holds true,
it would make 2020 MK53 the farthest known solar
system object ever discovered by humanity. Which
is incredible! But, and this is a catastrophic,
but for the math, because the observation arc
was only three days, The uncertainty of its orbit
is mind -boggling. How bad is it? Depending on
the mathematical method applied, the margin of
error on its distance from the Sun ranges from
plus or minus four astronomical units. Okay,
that's far. To over plus or minus 20 ,000 astronomical
units. Plus or minus 20 ,000. The margin of error
is literally tens of thousands of times larger
than the physical size of our entire planetary
system. Yes. We have absolutely zero idea where
it is. We know it exists somewhere in the deep
dark. But for all practical observational purposes,
it is utterly and completely lost. So what does
this all mean? We started this deep dive trying
to figure out how you lose a mountain in space.
And what we've learned is that our map of the
solar system is not a static, reliable drawing
in a textbook. Far from it. It is a living, breathing,
incredibly messy ledger of moving targets. a
ledger where objects the size of entire cities
can just slip through the math because a telescope
didn't watch them for an extra Tuesday in 1979,
or because Mars happened to pull them slightly
to the left. And that reality leaves us with
a rather profound concept to consider. What's
that? We spend so much time acting as if human
knowledge has conquered our local cosmic neighborhood.
We treat the solar system like a solved equation.
Right, like we have it all figured out. But the
phenomenon of lost minor planets proves that
chaos theory is the true ruler of the universe.
If a microscopic gas leak on a piece of space
trash or a slight gravitational nudge from a
passing moon can permanently erase our ability
to track a massive object, it suggests that the
universe is fundamentally unpredictable. Perhaps
the idea of a perfectly mapped solar system is
the biggest astronomical myth of all. the cosmos
might just be inherently beautifully unknowable.
But wait, think about this. We've spent this
entire deep dive talking about the hundreds of
thousands of minor planets we know we've lost.
But based on how easily a tiny gravitational
tug or a three -day observation window can hide
a 600 -meter rock for a century. I see where
you're going with this. How many massive objects
are weaving through our solar system right now
that we haven't even found once yet? That is
the real question. Well, on that slightly terrifying,
awe -inspiring note, we're going to wrap up.
Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. Whether
you're hunting for your lost car keys today or
just staring up at the night sky, keep looking
up. You never know what you might find or what
might be hiding right above you.