Jupiter Smashed, NASA Confirms, Leaving Scar

Originally posted by Exuberant1
Normally 'Surface of.. ' a planet is used in reference to the actual 'surface of a planet'

...So this article is not based on picture of the surface of the Planet Jupiter, but is about images of Jupiter's atmosphere and the effects of an impact on that.

That is called being disingenuous - It sells.

Not really. When you talk about the surface of a body in space, its the edge of its dominant structure. The "surface of the sun" is not the edge of the sun, but the end of the dense plasma ball. The surface of Jupiter is the end of the denser gases.

Originally posted by stevedel0
That sure as hell could have been us. Nobody even saw this thing coming.

That's actually highly unlikely. Jupiter's gravity well is extremely dominant in the solar system (after the sun's) and virtually all objects entering the solar system will be pulled into it, and if they don't hit it, into the sun. For an object to hit the earth it literally has to be falling towards the sun and hit the earth on the way in by chance.

Hubble took a picture of the scar, as shown in the link.





Not sure what to make of that. An asteroid/comet impact seems to remain as the popular theory.

On note on the military satellites there byproduct was that they collected information on meteorites entering Earths atmosphere it has nothing to do with searching for Near Earth Objects, Asteroids and such. As far as I know the information was used to track meteorites as they enter the atmosphere and locate there impact site considering most of the Earth is water its reasonable to conclude that the vast majority of impacts land in the ocean and its a little hard to find them after that. Remember there is a difference between asteroids and meteorites.

In this case Exuberant1, Phage is right any preceding meteor shower before an asteroid impact detected by this system would be to late to do anything, fortunately any asteroid heading to Earth would be picked up well before that anyway. You cant hide anything in the sky especially not large chunks of rocks.

To the topic. Why is anyone picking on the word 'surface'? Its not exactly scientific or completely accurate but it is generally considered that if your referring to the surface of Jupiter your talking about the visible surface of gas.

Its a great story to show how important our armature astronomers are no government puts enough effort of support into looking outwards, there to busy looking at the earth with there spy satellites and the importance of these astronomers who spend there time doing something the love but also protect our planet by tracking and searching for dangerous objects in space is always understated and under appreciated I think.

Also noticed the story was only picked up by more main stream news when Hubble took a picture. Anthony Wesley's picture's are great you can see and read detailed information about it on his site.

jupiter.samba.org...

reply to post by Exuberant1


Seeing as you are demanding answers from others you must be the person in the know here. May I ask one question of you please... do you genuinely feel we have the technology to monitor all trajectories approaching Jupiter currently? I only ask as that'd mean I've greatly under anticipated our current technologies.

I realise we have the technology to detect objects at that distance, but to the best of my knowledge we do not have or maintain technology that can monitor all trajectories simultaneously approaching planet Earth. Let alone the distant planet Jupiter.

It's a strong doubt of mine that it's reasonable to expect our resources to have allowed our detection capabilities to stretch that far currently.


~SNC

(edit; removed sig')

[edit on 25/7/09 by Sed Non Credo]

Originally posted by Edn
In this case Exuberant1, Phage is right any preceding meteor shower before an asteroid impact detected by this system would be to late to do anything,

Too late to let your family know that you love them?

Too late to get down to the bombshelter?

Too late to Pray?

*These things don't take long to do.

Originally posted by Exuberant1

Originally posted by Edn
In this case Exuberant1, Phage is right any preceding meteor shower before an asteroid impact detected by this system would be to late to do anything,

Too late to let your family know that you love them?

Too late to get down to the bombshelter?

Too late to Pray?

*These things don't take long to do.

If an asteroid was heading for Earth it would be picked up days, months or even years before these satellites pick up any debris cast in-front of the asteroid, arguing the point of these satellites picking up oncoming debris from an asteroid is therefore pretty pointless wouldn't you say?

Not to sound rude but it just seams like your nitpicking for the sake of creating an argument, same goes for the whole 'surface' of Jupiter nitpicking for the sake of a pointless argument instead of discussing an interesting event discovered by a guy in his garden.

Originally posted by Edn

If an asteroid was heading for Earth it would be picked up days, months or even years before these satellites pick up

Wrong.

We cannot track every asteroid, and many times we find out about their existence only after they miss us.

And how do you suppose we identify that a particular meteor shower is proceeding an asteroid? Assuming an asteroid even has any debris preceding it. Its not like the movies. There are a lot of unknown objects out there not currently found but your point again isnt much of a point. Anything big enough to harm us tends to be discovered pretty quick and again with the whole satellite thing whats the point in arguing it? id like an answer to that one. Theres no way to identify what any particular debris detected is from so why argue these satellites can detect incoming asteroids when they cant.

[edit on 25-7-2009 by Edn]

Duplicate Thread

This topic has already been covered in a pre existing thread. Op, the ATS search facility is your friend! Please check before posting.

New NASA Images Indicate Object Hits Jupiter

IRM

[edit on 26/7/09 by InfaRedMan]

reply to post by Exuberant1


That's true. And the only reason we saw the leftovers of Shoemaker-Levy 9 hitting jupiter is because it was pretty much discovered by accident. This is what I said in the other thread (the one started before the impact was confirmed).

In all probability, the outer planets are bombarded by similar objects much more frequently than we've been able to confirm thus far.

For hundreds of years, people have reported seeing flashes coming from the moon through their telescopes and/or binoculars. NASA thought these people were crazy. But then, in 2005, NASA began a study to watch the moon for these "flashes" to see if they could figure out what was causing it. It turns out these were basically meteorite impacts on the moon. NASA documented 100 impacts in a 2-1/2 year timeframe. Most of them miniscule but packing a wallop at 20-30,000 mph.

HERE is an animated GIF image of what these impacts look like and HERE is an image of the moon showing locations of each impact.

But it's pretty ironic that people were just written off all these years only for NASA to eventually confirm these events. This isn't like comets or asteroids hitting a planet, these are much smaller. But this is our own moon we're talking about here and we're only just now confirming this in 2008?

Here's the official NASA story:
science.nasa.gov...

Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under "L" … for lunatic.

HERE is a thread I started on ATS when this news story was released.

I imagine most planetary impacts involving asteroids or comets just go completely unnoticed. It would be a different story if it were something like mars being hit by an asteroid or comet. I'd think we'd know about it. But the outer planets are just statistically more likely to be hit. The outer planets do somewhat shield the inner solar system from these potential impactors, even if inly gravitationally. But this gravity could also alter the coarse of something and send it hurling towards earth and the outer planets can't stop everything.

We can't really be sure what percentage of asteroids and comets the outer solar system "intercepts" vs. what percentage slip through since we have no idea how often these impacts really occur.

The more comet and/or asteroid impacts we document the closer our estimates will be as to how much we're at risk. But the more of them we document, the more we also begin to realize the true extent to which we're vulnerable. We just don't notice everything headed our way. Some have probably whizzed by without anyone ever knowing. SO we are always at risk.

-ChriS

reply to post by InfaRedMan


There is already a thread on the impact, yes. But there isn't a thread regarding this particular news story. The older thread was before we knew what hit Jupiter. This story tells us NASA has confirmed what the impactor was (a comet). The old thread was just started before all of this was confirmed. Completely different.

-ChriS

[edit on 26-7-2009 by BlasteR]