Olivier Hainaut, of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, detected this bizarre cosmological body called Gault. He said: “This self-destruction event is rare. Active and unstable asteroids such as Gault are just now being detected because of new survey telescopes that scan the entire sky, which means asteroids that are misbehaving such as Gault cannot escape detection anymore."

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Images from the Hubble space telescope show two narrow, comet-like tails of dusty debris streaming from the asteroid (6478) Gault.

Each tail represents an episode in which the asteroid shed its material, key evidence that Gault is beginning to come apart.

Gault’s disintegration has been strongly linked to a rare process known as a YORP effect.

The YORP acronym stands for “Yarkovsky–O'Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack,” the names of four scientists who contributed to the concept.

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