Polyhymnia is an asteroid and does not represent a threat to the Earth, it peacefully orbits the sun in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars Jupiter, it is about 54 km in diameter, it is a considerable size, it would be somewhat larger than the island of Pequena.
The impact of this asteroid on Earth with that size would cause a mass extinction, most of the human population would die and the environmental conditions throughout the planet would be altered for many years, perhaps for centuries, it would not be the end of life on Earth. the earth, but a new beginning, fortunately this will not happen Polyhymnia is not a threat to the earth and
What I have told you would be in the case of a normal asteroid.
Polyhymnia is not something normal they would fall into the special category of CUDO, acronym in English for compact ultra dense objects, Polyhymnia is not the only one in this category, but it may be the strangest.
Polyhymnia's original measurements suggest a density of 75.28 grams per cubic centimeter, it's a crazy amount, it's an impossible amount, it's such a dense figure that the researcher who made those measurements said that the results were unrealistic, that surely It was a mistake.
To give us an idea, the densest planet in the solar system is the Earth with five 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter, we barely surpass Mercury which has 5.43 grams per cubic centimeter, Polyhymnia if that calculation were real it would be 14 times more denser than the earth and the denser something is, the more compact and heavier the atoms that make it up will be.
If compared to the asteroid Psyche which is mainly composed of metals and which the media announces as the most valuable object in the universe and which has more gold and valuable metals than all the reserves of gold and valuable metals on earth, this asteroid has almost 4 grams per cubic centimeter less than the density of the earth and 18.8 times less than the density of Polyhymnia.
So astronomers considered that this figure was impossible and that Polyhymnia's calculations were erroneous, it is not something abnormal either, calculating the densities of objects in the Cosmos is complicated and the smaller the object is, the more difficult it is to do it below 500 km. in diameter the tasks of calculating the density become very complicated, if Polyhymnia had a satellite, a small asteroid orbiting it as happens in other cases would help many to make an accurate calculation.
It is assumed that the impossible figure of the density of Polyhymnia is erroneous, imperfect, we will have to wait to develop better technologies to be able to better measure this asteroid, we have reached as far as our instruments go.
But, and if it were not an error, and if this ultradensity were real, that was what researchers from the University of Arizona considered, they came to the conclusion that to justify such extreme density, typical metals such as iron, gold or lead, it is known that there are some asteroids that have a very high density greater than that of osmium, which is 22.59 grams per cubic centimeter, osmium is the densest element that we can find naturally.
Do not confuse, density is not the same as atomic weight, in the case of osmium its small atomic radius gives rise to a poor separation between its atoms, so more osmium atoms fit per cubic centimeter than, for example, gold atoms per cubic centimeter. , although gold has a slightly greater atomic mass than osmium.
The important thing is that the supposed density of Polymnia multiplied by 3.3 times the density of osmium, there is nothing known natural or artificial that can explain such a density, it is that not even the heavy elements of the periodic table are useful to us because among other things they are elements that can only be obtained artificially and their existence before disintegrating is in some cases seconds or even much less than a second.
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