Posted on 10/08/2014 1:30:04 PM PDT by BenLurkin
It was 20 years ago this past July when images of Jupiter being pummeled by a comet caught the worlds attention. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had flown too close to Jupiter. It was captured by the giant planets gravity and torn into a string of beads. One by one the comet fragments impacted Jupiter leaving blemishes on its atmosphere, each several times larger than Earth in size.
Until that event, no one had seen a comet impact a planet. Now, Mars will see a very close passage of the comet Siding Spring on October 19th. When the comet was first discovered, astronomers quickly realized that it was heading straight at Mars. In fact, it appeared it was going to be a bulls-eye hit except for the margin of error in calculating a comets trajectory from 1 billion kilometers (620 million miles, 7 AU) away.
It took several months of analysis for a cataclysmic impact on Mars to be ruled out. So now today, Mars faces a just a cosmic close shave. But this comet packs enough energy that an impact would have globally altered Mars surface and atmosphere.
So what should us Earthlings gather from this and other events like it? Are we next? Why or why not should we be prepared for impacts from these mile wide objects?
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
An illustration of the Siding Spring comet in comparison to the Comet 67P atop Los Angeles. The original image was the focus of Bob Kings article What Comets, Parking Lots and Charcoal Have in Common. (Credit: ESA, anosmicovni)
How come every author from that site has the last name of “On”?
that old: Energy = 1/2M*V**2
It almost doesn’t matter what M(ass) is because the V(elocity) is EXPONENTIAL (V**2).
So, with something traveling very fast (125,000mph) the V = 125K*125K = 15,625,000,000.
The name of the article should be,”Give us money”.
“Nice planet youz got there. Hate to see anything happen to it.”
Actually, no one saw Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact Jupiter. All the fragments hit Jupiter on the side facing away from Earth.
As I recall, a visible flash was seen reflected by one of the Jovian moons.
Jupiter's very fast rotation period brought the impact sites into view within a few hours.
Lucifer’s Hammer
Weeeelll, if a comet is going to hit us, there’s not much we can do about it, soooo... why worry?
All three are available for free download if you want to read them.
I saw that that night. We’ll I saw the spots anyway. Had the scope setup in the yard and had a great evening!
Wish I could see it pass. It will be too dim I fear.
I ran what the comet would look like from Mars through a planetarium program. It’s gonna be brighter than the full Moon and much bigger.
from 1994, a “Dewey Defeats Truman” kind of thing:
The Big Fizzle is Coming
By Paul Weissman
Nature, July 14, 1994
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news9.html
> Thus the giant impacts will produce a spectacular meteor shower of bright bolides, but not the massive fireball explosions that have been predicted by some researchers. The impacts will be a cosmic fizzle. The cometary meteors may resemble the bolide which exploded harmlessly at 25-34 km altitude over the south Pacific on February 1 of this year, with an estimated yield of 15-20 kilotons. The Shoemaker-Levy 9 snowball explosions may be closer to about 30 megatons each, but still far less than the 100,000 megaton explosions that some have predicted.
(turns out, even the smaller ones were well over 100,000 megatons; the brightest one delivered about 6 million)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9#Impacts
> Over the next 6 days, 21 distinct impacts were observed, with the largest coming on July 18 at 07:33 UTC when fragment G struck Jupiter. This impact created a giant dark spot over 12,000 km across, and was estimated to have released an energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (600 times the world’s nuclear arsenal). Two impacts 12 hours apart on July 19 created impact marks of similar size to that caused by fragment G, and impacts continued until July 22, when fragment W struck the planet.
With the Illudium Q36 Explosive Space Modulator!
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