Strange asteroid becomes first known ‘permanent resident’ from outside our solar system

Hey bub, you’re going the wrong way.  The solar system’s first known “resident” that came from interstellar space — an asteroid orbiting backward around Jupiter — has been discovered, scientists announced Monday.  “How the asteroid came to move in this way while sharing Jupiter’s orbit has until now been a mystery,” said Fathi Namouni,

lead author of the new study and a scientist at the University of Cote d’Azur in Nice, France.  The planets and most other objects in our solar system travel around the sun in the same direction. This asteroid is different — moving in the opposite direction in “retrograde” orbit.  The asteroid has the inelegant name of 2015 BZ509, indicating the year of its discovery. READ MORE