A ring of dust was found around Mercury, and a group of asteroids was found in the orbit of Venus

Two new discoveries can change our seemingly well-established understanding of the inner part of the solar system.

Mercury shares its orbit with a vast ring of dust, according to a recent study. In addition, a cloud of asteroids, which has not yet been observed by scientists before, can be the source of a similar dust halo in the vicinity of Venus, another study notes.

Both Venus and Earth, when moving around the Sun, collected dust particles from the surrounding space by the action of their own gravity. However, it was previously believed that such a dust ring did not exist around Mercury because of too intense an impact on dust particles from the Sun and a small mass of Mercury. But in a new study, a group led by Guillermo Stenborg showed that there was a dust ring around Mercury about 15 million kilometers wide. The study is based on observations made using NASA STEREO spacecraft, and computer models built by the team. These results were published last November in the Astrophysical Journal.

In another new study, two NASA scientists, Marc Kuchner and Petr Pokorný tried to determine the source of dust of a similar dust ring, located along the orbit of Venus. The width of this ring is 10 million kilometers, and the density of dust in it is only 10 percent higher than the density of dust in the space surrounding the ring.

As it turned out as a result of this analysis, none of the known sources of dust in the solar system — including the Asteroid Belt, the Oort Cloud, the Jupiter comets, and other sources — can be responsible for dust in Venus’s orbit. At that time, the authors of the work suggested that the asteroid group, previously unknown, could be located in the orbit of the “sister planet” of our Earth. According to Kuchner and Pokorny, these asteroids have not yet been noticed by anyone, because, firstly, no one intended to search for them exactly where they are, and secondly, to observe small dull objects in the orbits of planets lying in the inner part The solar system is close to the sun, associated with considerable difficulties.

A ring of dust was found around Mercury, and a group of asteroids was found in the orbit of Venus
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