Asteroids that come too close to the Sun don’t last long. Now astronomers think they might know why.

An artist’s impression shows an asteroid disintegrating as it passes near the Sun. As surface material is blown off, dust and pebbles spread out along the asteroid’s orbit, creating a meteor stream. If that stream crosses Earth's orbit, we see the asteroids remnants as shooting stars.

Karen Teramura

Coming too close to the Sun isn’t good for an asteroid. Sunlight removes bits and pieces off the body’s surface, until nothing is left but a stream of particles — one we might see on Earth as a meteor shower

That is the solution to the case of missing near-Sun asteroids, as presented by Mikael Granvik, (Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, and University of Helsinki, Finland).…