The asteroid belt?

Question

Could anyone tell me approximately how many asteroids there are in the asteroid belt? Thanks! x

Answer 1

164,612 asteroids have been discovered so far. That includes all asteroids though, not just main belt. Who knows how many remain to be discovered though. It is worth noting that the rate of discovery went WAY up in 1998, peaked in 2000 and fell back down in 2003. That corresponds to the efforts started world wide to search for asteroids that could hit Earth. Those searches were finding 20,000 or 30,000 a year for a while but only 228 have been found so far this year. This tells me that most of the asteroids big enough for our telescopes to see have already been discovered.

Answer 2

This is a difficult question. However, it is estimated that there is enough material in the Asteroid Belt to create a Mars sized planet. Now, if you consider that there are only a handful of objects large enough to force themselves into spheres and a few hundred that are in the neighborhood of 1km across, then there are the tens of thousands that are just large enough to be detectable with earth-based telescope, then there are the millions that are smaller still. These smaller objects range from the size of small cars down to dust grain sizes. Now, add all that up together to estimate the size of a Mars like planet and you come up with a figure that is probably closer to hundreds of trillions objects within our Asteroid Belt.
I hope this helps. Good luck.

Answer 3

700,000 to 1.7 million asteroids that are at least 1 km in size, meaning there are certainly at least that many more that are much smaller.

Answer 4

I couldn't tell you, even being approximate.
There are lots, in all different shapes and sizes. Probably so small we can't see them, this of course, effects any sort of accurate number.

Answer 5

Its in the order of billions. Ranging from a few cm to a few km across.

Answer 6

how are we supposed to know that?!not even the greatest minds and the hubble space telescope can tell us!