English

Asteroidal activity amongst meteor datasets: Confirmed new "rock-comet" stream and search for a tidal disruption signature

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2026-02-20 v1

Abstract

Asteroid activity (e.g., thermo-mechanical breakdown, impacts, rotational shedding, tidal disruption, etc.) can inject meteoroids into near-Earth space and leave detectable signatures in orbit catalogs. We searched for such recent signatures using orbit-similarity statistics and explicit null-hypothesis testing applied to shower-removed, asteroidal video-meteor datasets. Our sample comprises 235{,}271 meteors and fireballs from four all-sky video networks (GMN, CAMS, EDMOND, and SonotaCo). For meteors we use the geocentric dissimilarity criterion DND_N and construct KDE-based sporadic null realizations to evaluate (i) global cumulative similarity distributions and (ii) localized DND_N-conditioned (DN<0.015D_N<0.015) pair-excess maps in the (U,λ)(U,\lambda_\odot) plane; we additionally apply DBSCAN (ϵ=0.03\epsilon=0.03, min_samples=2\mathrm{min\_samples}=2) to isolate the coherent, statistically significant structures. We find no survey-consistent, stream-like signature in the Earth-like, low-inclination region expected for a distinct \emph{recent} tidal-disruption family; instead, significant-bin membership implies, under our adopted detection thresholds and binning, a conservative combined upper limit of 53/235,271\leq 53/235{,}271 (2.3×104\leq 2.3\times10^{-4}) for sporadic asteroidal meteors plausibly attributable to a detectable recent tidal-disruption-like contribution. In contrast, we confirm the detection of a new diffuse southern Virginid-region stream: GMN exhibits a local z-score of 6.32 relative to the KDE-null mean in the UλU-\lambda_\odot phase space (global significance of 5.3~σ\sigma), with weaker supporting excess in SonotaCo and EDMOND. DBSCAN isolates N=282N=282 members (243 GMN plus additional SonotaCo, CAMS, and EDMOND) on a low-perihelion, asteroidal orbit (q=0.22±0.01q=0.22\pm0.01 au, i=12.3±1.8i=12.3^{\circ}\pm1.8^{\circ}, TJ=4.6±0.3T_J=4.6\pm0.3) consistent with near-Sun thermo-mechanical ``rock-comet'' activity.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.16845,
  title  = {Asteroidal activity amongst meteor datasets: Confirmed new "rock-comet" stream and search for a tidal disruption signature},
  author = {Patrick M. Shober},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.16845},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal