SUMMARY: The fountains of the great deep launched rocks as well as muddy water. As rocks moved farther from Earth, Earth’s gravity became less significant to them, and the gravity of nearby rocks became increasingly significant. Consequently, many rocks, assisted by their mutual gravity and surrounding clouds of water vapor, merged to become asteroids. Isolated rocks in space are meteoroids. Drag forces caused by water vapor and thrust forces produced by the radiometer effect concentrated most smaller asteroids in what is now the asteroid belt. Larger asteroids were acted on longer by more powerful forces which pushed them out beyond Neptune. All the so-called “mavericks of the solar system” (asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects) resulted from the explosive events at the beginning of the flood.Asteroids, also called minor planets, are rocky bodies orbiting the Sun. Ninety percent of them have orbits between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a region called the asteroid belt. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is almost 600 miles in diameter and has about one-third the volume of all other asteroids combined. Orbital information is available for some 625,000 asteroids.3 Some that cross Earth’s orbit might do great damage if they ever collided with Earth.Two explanations are given for the origin of asteroids: (1) they were the remains of an exploded planet, and (2) a planet failed to evolve completely. Experts recognize the problems with each explanation and are puzzled. The hydroplate theory offers a simple and complete—but quite different—solution that also answers other questions.
