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Few years ago, astronomers stumbled upon something really strange, a large number of asteroids were missing from the Solar System's central region. The asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, there were plenty of space rocks and could be seen, as expected, around the neighboring area of Earth, Venus and Mercury. However, there is a zone very close to the sun where lot of asteroids seem to be missing.

A paper published on Wednesday in Nature reveals that the scientists may have answer for the case of missing asteroids. According to the researchers, the asteroids seem to be collapsing as they come too close the sun, leaving behind space rubble in their orbits.

The authors of paper can't really point out the actual reason that makes the asteroid disintegrate as it gets too close to the sun. However, there are a few possibilities that the scientists lay out in their paper.

They say that sun's extreme radiation may be causing the asteroid to increase their rotation to such a point where gravity and binding forces are unable to keep them together.

Another possibility is that as the asteroid flies too close to the sun, its surface becomes so hot that it causes thermal cracking, similar to the kind we see in the mud that has been parched due to strong sun, as reported by Los Angeles Times

Finally, the scientists reconsider if asteroids are made up of elements that are highly volatile in nature and can go directly from solid state to gas in moderate temperatures. They also wonder if it creates enough pressure to make the asteroid's body explode. But all these are just lines of future inquiry, said Robert Jedicke of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and an author on the paper. "We really steer away from speculating too much about the mechanisms by which they are disappearing," he said. "What our data shows is there is a deficit of objects close to the sun, and the fact that we can see that deficit means they have to disappear quite rapidly."