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Science 9 August 2002:
Vol. 297. no. 5583, pp. 942 - 943
DOI: 10.1126/science.1072078
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Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Compass: Enhanced Perspectives

SOLAR SYSTEM SCIENCE:
Enhanced: Two Bodies Are Better than One

Joseph A. Burns

Recent spacecraft flybys have shown that at least one asteroid has a smaller companion. Ground-based telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope, radar measurements, and brightness variations are also providing increasing evidence for binaries in our solar system. In his Perspective, Burns explains how these binaries may have formed and discusses the insights into collisions in our solar system gained from their study.

The author is in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. E-mail: jab16{at}cornell.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
A Low-Density M-type Asteroid in the Main Belt.
J. L. Margot and M. E. Brown (2003)
Science 300, 1939-1942
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)