  Numerical modeling has long suggested that gravitationally-bound (or
so-called rubble-pile) near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) can be destroyed by tidal
forces during close and slow encounters with terrestrial planets. However,
tidal disruptions of NEAs have never been directly observed nor have they been
directly attributed to any families of NEAs. Here we show population-level
evidence for the tidal disruption of NEAs during close encounters with the
Earth and Venus. Debiased model distributions of NEA orbits and absolute
magnitudes based on observations by the Catalina Sky Survey during 2005--2012
underpredict the number of NEAs with perihelion distances coinciding with the
semimajor axes of Venus and the Earth. A detailed analysis of the orbital
distributions of the excess NEAs shows that their characteristics agree with
the prediction for tidal disruptions, and they cannot be explained by
observational selection effects or orbital dynamics. Accounting for tidal
disruptions in evolutionary models of the NEA population partly bridges the gap
between the predicted rate of impacts by asteroids with diameters of tens of
meters and observed statistics of fireballs in the same size range.
