An international research group, including Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, has shown how the same forces responsible for building dust bunnies under our beds may be responsible for holding the asteroid Didymos together. Based on our current knowledge of how asteroids form, bodies the size of Didymos are expected to be accumulated ‘rubble piles’ of material. Yet Didymos spins relatively quickly, rotating once every 2.26 hours, which could theoretically cause it to break apart depending on its structural properties. To investigate this mystery a research group used advanced supercomputer simulations to spin the asteroid apart. Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May and his collaborator, Claudia Manzoni from the London Stereoscopic Company, made stereo 3D movies of the disruption event, highlighting the cohesive role of Van der Waals forces, preventing the real-life asteroid spinning apart. Read the full paper here