> What I found most exciting was that, from the analysis of the size and colors of craters on Ryugu, the Hayabusa2 team concluded that at some point the asteroid must have been closer to the Sun that it is now. That would explain the amount of reddening of the surface. Using two different models for calculating the age of craters, the team estimated that this solar heating-induced reddening must have happened either eight million years ago or as recently as 300,000 years ago—a mere blink of an eye, cosmologically speaking.
Just about every time I read a story on astronomy, I’m blown away by our ability to simulate the conditions that must have led to our observations. Cosmology especially, and our ability to model the moments after the Big Bang.
Hats off to the experts of the scientific world.