Posted on 10/26/2017 6:45:17 AM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts
To date, every comet humanity has seen inside the Solar System has come from the Solar System, whether it's the Kuiper Belt or the billions of comets believed to make up the Oort Cloud. Now, however, it looks like astronomers might have found a comet of interstellar origin.
They've used Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope to track C/2017 U1, an object with a very eccentric, hyperbolic orbit (that is, moving quickly enough to escape gravitational pull) that wasn't connected to the Sun. The trajectory suggests that it's a comet which escaped from a nearby star, rather than something knocked out a familiar path and drawn in by the Sun's gravity.
These are preliminary findings, and there's more work to be done before researchers can be completely sure. If they confirm the orbit, though, it'll expand our understanding of space: we'll have tangible evidence that star systems can "swap" comets if the circumstances are right. The concept wasn't far-fetched given that comets are fairly common, but it's good to have tangible proof.
Graphic at source shows the path coming rather close to Earth but there is no specifics given.
Grab your purple shrouds and put on your Nikes!
Hehe...the first thing that popped in to my head was, “That’s no moon.”
If it starts to slow down, grab the lasers.
The chances of an object leaving one star’s gravity and being pulled in by another star’s gravity are very very very small. I mean really small. There is a lot of distance between stars, so much that if two galaxies collided, the stars wouldn’t come anywhere near hitting each other.
True, however when multiple bodies interact weird stuff happens. It could have been accelerated out.
When did they clean the telescope lens last?
Yes, but it had to be very lucky to end up living in our neighborhood. I guess there’s a first time for everything.
Sky and Telescope magazine, the source for the article in Engadget, says "It passed closest to Earth on October 14th at a distance of about 24,000,000 km (15,000,000 miles)". It has an estimated diameter of 525 feet. Big enough to ruin your whole day.
There have been comets in the past whose orbits were suspected to be hyperbolic. Later analysis has always shown them to have originated in the Solar System. I suspect the same will happen to this one.
Would not want to get hit by one of those, I.E Larry Niven.
To date, every comet humanity has seen inside the Solar System has come from the Solar System, whether it's the Kuiper Belt or the billions of comets believed to make up the Oort Cloud.If the brain's workin' right today, a comet with a parbolic trajectory originated in (or at least, has been captured by) this Solar System; a hyperbolic trajectory indicates an interstellar object. Ping-a-roo, everybody.
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An oldie, from the 'ard drive, a nice sidebar:Rogue Planet Find Makes Astronomers Ponder TheoryEighteen rogue planets that seem to have broken all the rules about being born from a central, controlling sun may force a rethink about how planets form, astronomers said on Thursday... "The formation of young, free-floating, planetary-mass objects like these is difficult to explain by our current models of how planets form," Zapatero-Osorio said... They are not linked to one another in an orbit, but do move together as a cluster, she said... Many stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, may have formed in a similar manner to the Orion stars, she said. So there could be similar, hard-to-see planets floating around free near the Solar System.
by Maggie Fox
October 5, 2000
OH, nuts, I didn’t check before I built that post.
and it’s also here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3599290/posts?page=56#56
Sure its not likely that it is interstellar but if it could be proven that a comet was interstellar that could provide a mechanism for Panspermia so would be significant. Proving it is not just “appearance” of interstellar origin is the trick though; more evidence is needed imo.
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