Posted on 07/14/2022 1:35:42 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Rather, the comet's behavior is probably typical for comets making their first trip toward the sun — we just haven't been able to observe it before.
"What makes this comet special is that it was discovered early," Jewitt said. "We've been able to follow the way the comet changes with distance from the sun over a much larger range than has ever been done before."
Comet K2 comes from even farther away than the Kuiper Belt, Jewitt said. The comet's original home was most likely the Oort Cloud, the repository of comets and planetary fragments that extends from 2,000 to 200,000 AU from the sun. There, surrounded by billions of other frozen snowballs and space rocks, K2 spent billions of years slumbering until it received an unexpected gravitational kick, probably from a star passing by the outer edges of the solar system. This kick propelled K2 on the voyage that we can now observe in real time.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
I have yet another dumb question: After all these billions of years, why is this “massive” comet just now making its first run at the sun?
No one knows and they like to make things up using big words so they don’t sound as clueless as they are.
The universe is a big place.
This probably happens all the time, we just happened to be around to see this one.
“it received an unexpected gravitational kick, probably from a star passing by the outer edges of the solar system.”
Interesting. I wonder what star this might be? The Oort cloud is about .79 light years from the sun. Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light years from our sun.
Here is a list of the nearest stars to our solar system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs
I hope this is the one that comes comes with trumpet music.
Space aliens, of course.
Read the first line of the post / article.
I heard the sun is pretty big?
Many things become believable if you decide that pure energy plus mind-bending amounts of time equals people.
Against that backdrop, what’s odd that we wouldn’t notice an interloping star swinging by to punt a comet toward jolly ol’ Sol?
An object in motion tends to stay in motion.
An object at rest tends to remain at rest.
The comet is in motion now.
Either it has been in motion for a very long time,
OR it was set in motion by another moving object we didn’t notice.
A star, though???
How long ago, and how would such a substantial thing have escaped notice?
Wouldn’t it be better — more honest — for astronomers to simply admit, “We have a couple of vague ideas, but we don’t actually know when or how this comet was set in motion”?
What would be wrong with just saying so plainly?
I swear, the words “I don’t know” are like Kryptonite in the world of science; corner some scientific prognosticator into having to utter them, and they hiss and spit, and shrink into a fetal ball like Gollum warding off an elven rope.
Could be a chance interaction with a dark planet body in the Oort cloud that slowed down the comet. We would not easily see such an occurrence.
But, like you said, they don't really know and neither do I.
Something called “Scholz’s star” apparently passed through the Oort Cloud some 70,000 years ago, presumably kicking up a bunch of fuss among potential comets (which take a long time to make it to our neighborhood). Don’t know if this one was part of that encounter, or whether it’s associated with something that happened even farther back.
I think we should ask a Hollywood celebrity.
“Something called “Scholz’s star” apparently passed through the Oort Cloud some 70,000 years ago”
Thanks. Probably something like that or a similar event much longer ago.
The Oort cloud is so far away that something stirred up might take a long time to make its way into the solar system.
From Scholtz’s Star (wikipedia): “Ninety-eight percent of mathematical simulations of the star system’s trajectory indicated that it [Scholtz Star] passed through the Solar System’s Oort cloud, or within 120,000 AU (0.58 pc; 1.9 ly) of the Sun.
Comets perturbed from the Oort cloud would require roughly two million years to get to the inner Solar System.”
from your excerpt, the answer:
The comet's original home was most likely the Oort Cloud, the repository of comets and planetary fragments that extends from 2,000 to 200,000 AU from the sun. There, surrounded by billions of other frozen snowballs and space rocks, K2 spent billions of years slumbering until it received an unexpected gravitational kick, probably from a star passing by the outer edges of the solar system.
The best known comet in the world, Halley's Comet, has been visiting about every 76 years (has varied between about 74 and about 79 years) since at least 240 BC (per Chinese records), and it's been speculated to have been seen in ancient Greece in the 5th c BC (but that's not generally accepted, including by this guy). Even just from the lower figure, that's 29 visits (most recent was in 1986, was a dud for me due to winter skies and low on the horizon), during which it has shed a lot of its former mass, but has enough left to still put on a show. That suggests that it took its first trip through perhaps in 240 BC.
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