Sketchplanations
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The potato radius

A lumpy asteroid at the centre of an expanding radius showing that it would get smoother and rounder as it gets larger

I like this radius. It explains some of why asteroids are lumpy and bumpy, kind of like potatoes, and yet planets and moons are smooth round balls.

From the potato radius size, about 2–300km, the mass of the rock itself gets large enough that it is pulled in on its own gravity and consequently starts to round itself off.

I learned about this from Brian Cox’s show Forces of Nature .

Not sure about asteroids, meteors and meteorites?

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