3 ms·

This was my first thought as well. I haven't read the article yet, maybe I'll learn... Edit to add: read the article, it sounds exactly like it's the Roche lim

• Animats 3y ago
  It does. A fast pass through a gravitational gradient by a pile of rubble is going to rearrange the rubble a bit. What happens can be simulated, and someone did that back in 1998.[1] There are pictures of the simulation result. Objects moving fast enough don't get disrupted. "Our results indicate that this limit is well below the mean encounter speeds of long-period comets with Earth. Thus, we predict that few comets ever undergo strong tidal disruption in the terrestrial planet region." Since 1998 many more near-earth objects have been found, because more automated equipment is looking for incoming threats. Don't know about speeds. Looking back at the 1998 simulations using new data might be useful. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103598959541 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910359...