By Ron Cowen
At the end of a lecture that he gave at the Asteroids 2001 meeting in Santa Flavia, Italy, last month, astronomer Steve Ostro reached into his backpack and threw a bunch of dog bones into the audience. The crowd couldn’t get enough.
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No, the scientists weren’t hungering for something other than Sicilian cuisine. It’s just that they wanted to take home their very own plastic replica of 216 Kleopatra, an asteroid shaped like a classic dog bone.