Watch biggest asteroid in the Solar System vaporise all life on Earth at hypersonic speed

PhD Meteorite specialist, Helena Bates, explained: “The Yarkovsky effect is basically when the Sun heats up one side of the rotating body so the asteroid is rotating as it orbits the Sun.

“And as one side heats up, it kind of absorbs heat and then, as it rotates, that side will begin to face away from the Sun and will radiate that heat outwards.”

She said: “That basically acts like a small thruster to push the asteroid into a slightly different orbit.

“And because the amount of heat that the asteroid absorbs is to do with things like composition, what the asteroids made of, which we don’t know, that means it’s really really hard to predict the effect of the Sun.”

These asteroids can sometimes be in the solar system absorbing Sun for billions of years. Scientists have discovered that this sometimes makes big differences to their trajectories.