[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Searched and found no current article posted.

Graphic at source shows the path coming rather close to Earth but there is no specifics given.

[The Sons of Liberty]

Researchers observe the first known interstellar comet

Grab your purple shrouds and put on your Nikes!

[Genoa]

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.

[Delta 21]

When did they clean the telescope lens last?

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Graphic at source shows the path coming rather close to Earth but there is no specifics given.

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.

[zeugma]

It might be an interstellar comet. Then again it might just be a comet that ran into another object in the oort cloud, and had it's trajectory deflected to one that appears interstellar. Of course, that wouldn't get a big headline.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks 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.

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.

---

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

---

[BenLurkin]