Posted on 08/12/2017 8:21:52 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Every object in our Solar System that takes the plunge from out beyond Neptune to our inner reaches, where the rocky planets lie, will become a comet. As it nears the Sun, its ices melt, creating the tails we associate with them, and also creating a debris path that can create meteor showers if they cross Earth's orbit. For thousands of years, the most consistent, spectacular meteor shower has been the Perseids, created by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.
At its incredibly large size (26 kilometers across) and speed, it contains nearly 30 times the energy of the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. Over the next few thousand years, it will come perilously close to Earth. If Jupiter — which it also passes by — gives it just the slightest gravitational kick, it could be flung into the Sun, ejected from the Solar System, or hurtled directly into our world. If this were to happen, and it's a real possibility some 2400 years from now, it would mark the largest mass extinction our world has seen in hundreds of millions of years.
Every August, the Perseid meteor shower delights skywatchers everywhere. While some years it's a disappointment, either being washed out by a bright Moon or delivering a relatively sparse stream of particles for Earth to collide with, other years the show is spectacular. This year, the waning gibbous Moon will wash out about half the meteors, making the best time to view it just after sunset, before the Moon rises.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Read the Scriptures, dimwit “journalist”. You’ll find out how it “ends”.
Cloudy for the next 3 or 4 days.
Diana, orbital mechanics are well understood and are nothing like weather or climate when it comes to modeling. You can calculate orbits with excellent precision.
Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle's orbital properties very well known and understood. Every 133 years, it makes a complete orbit around the Sun, coming about 8 million km (5 million miles) interior to Earth's orbit, yet reaching farther away from the Sun than even Pluto does at its most distant. It last entered the inner Solar System in December of 1992, and won't do so again until 2126. We'll get a close pass (within 1,000,000 miles) in 3044, but it ought to miss us. In fact, its next 2,000+ years of orbits are mapped out incredibly well, and the Earth is 100% safe until at least 4479, when it will come quite close to Earth once again. Even then, there's still a 99.9999% chance it will miss us.However, astrophysicists do make some simplifying assumptions leading to model uncertainty:
The way scientists classify the likelihood of a collision between an asteroid-or-comet and a planet is by measuring its MOID, or the Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance. If these were the only two objects orbiting the Sun and there were no mutual gravitational interactions between anything else...I doubt they are ignoring the gravitational effects of the large gas giants, but you never know.
“...Long before 2400 yrs from now we would be able to divert it from hitting the earth”
Perhaps, tectonic plate shifts, subduction snap backs, seismic activities, and volcanic blow outs notwithstanding...
In the 4417, if man is alive...
So long and thanks for all the fish.
It wouldnt be something to see, a comet striking the sun.
A 26km object would be near-impossible to see. And I think it would break up and vaporize losing all volatiles long before, on previous close passes.
Is it at all possible to tell us why?
The sun could blow up tomorrow too.
Some people just have to take the fun out of everything.
Anyway, I’ve got my official solar glasses and a bottle
of SPF 4000 so I’m good to go.
On the bright side, you won’t have to re-purpose your vintage Halley’s Comet 1910 gas mask for the time being.
That is plenty of time to develop technology to deal with such eventualities. If that thing does take a turn towards earth, count on it being nudged into a different orbit somewhere between here and Jupiter on its way in, or possibly blasted into oblivion. We’ll need this technology sooner or later for some significant impact, and my rough guess is that the technology will exist before 2500 A.D.
Among writers, this is known as good writing. Among smart people, it’s trash, written by an ignorant incompetent.
I still like the odds. I'll be around. I'm not going until the Mariners win the World Series.
I doubt it would be noticeable even with instruments. Scaled, the collision would be approximately the equivalent of an object the size of the head of a pin hitting something like an aircraft carrier or the Hoover dam.
LOL! ‘Blonde Logic!’
Maybe we should all move to our Root Cellars on a permanent basis? ;)
Thanks for putting that in English for me! :)
Eventually, the earth will be wiped out and the doomsayers will be vindicated. When that happens, I will admit that I was wrong and they were right.
Apparently not simple to figure out where things will move to based on their known position and velocity, as there is an unknown extent of factors besides gravity acting upon the moving bodies within the solar system. Start with the “keyhole.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_keyhole
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