A comet struck Neptune 200 years ago

I came across this today

Researchers studying Neptune's atmosphere found evidence that a comet may have hit the planet about two centuries ago.

link to site

200 years ago?!!

Thats too close for comfort right?

What with shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994 are we next? Only kidding! However it seem celestial impacts are more common than we thought thats two within the last 200 years that we know of!


Wait a moment read the article on the site SATURN had an impact 230 years ago!


I hope these gas giants are keeping these "frequent" occurences from our neighbourhood!

Nothing surprising here really, things in space hit other things.

Neptune is the 8th planet and furthest out now that Pluto got downgraded, the inner planets fortunately for us reside in a comparatively quieter part of space. The gas giants do a pretty good job of hoovering up objects like that into their massive gravity wells.

We do get some uncomfortably near misses though, one that gives me the willies was a pretty big one that we only saw when it was a few days away... The kicker is that it PASSED us a few days earlier and was already on it's way ... Had that one passed through the cosmic eye of the needle we would have been blissfully unaware right up till the last minute. That one was not an extinction level one I think, but it would defiantly of removed a large city.

It surprised me how frequent these events actually occur though.


Another near miss in 1989 if my memory serves we had been in its path 6 hours earlier!

reply to post by wellsybelieves


Ouch!

Six hours...adds a whole new meaning to 'what a difference a day makes' doesn't it.

ELE or not, an impact from a relatively small asteroid or meteorite may not wipe out every trace of life on this world, but it would probably propel survivors back into a more primitive existence, a new dark ages.

impacts are constant in our solor system, its just we don't have eyes everywhere to see them.
im surprised that we dont see or hear about more.

On the same subject I have just read this... Trojan asteroids around Neptune could hit Earth

So it looks like this could be a possible problem after all, all these objects are on unpredictable orbits and could get a gravitation kick and flung in our direction!!! - And no one knows how many there are.

Edit, there was a quote here, it seemed to mess up the post, visit the link!

edit: hmmm that was odd, my text was not posted - maybe the quote is too big, test and will re edit if needed


[edit on 2/8/2010 by Now_Then]

reply to post by Now_Then


Now that IS frightening!

It will happen one day! I wonder what a comet impact of the moon would a) look like from earth b) have an effect on earth impacting the moon.


If it were not to affect us wouldn't it be something to witness such an event?!

Gas giants are the hoovers of the solar system. We're lucky that they're here to suck the comets away from our orbital path.

reply to post by john124


they are also responsible for chucking many our way too.
jupiter has a massive influence on everything in our solar system.