I have begun to not post articles from this author, but decided to hold my nose and post this one.
” 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. “
He has no idea what will happen but labels it a ‘real possibility’!
You should have not held your nose.
Compared to all the other real or imaginary possibilities that may spell the end of humanity, this one has to rank very low in the range of probabilities. We are in WAY more danger from Kim Jong Un, as a means of “end of humanity” than we are by a chance encounter with a shower of meteors.
The operative word here is “might”, Then again, there is the very high probability that all these events “might not” affect mankind in any significant way, shape, manner, or form.
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.
Is it at all possible to tell us why?