Earth’s minimoon may be a chip off the old block: New research suggests that 2024 PT5 — a small, rocky body dubbed a “minimoon” during its discovery last year — may have been blown off the moon during a giant impact long ago, making it the second known sample traveling near Earth’s orbit. The discovery hints at a hidden population of lunar fragments traveling near Earth. “If there were only one object, that would be interesting but an outlier,” Teddy Kareta, a planetary scientist at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, said…
Read MoreA whole ‘population’ of minimoons may be lurking near Earth, researchers say
