Evidence found for unseen comet that may threaten Earth

Evidence found for unseen comet that may threaten Earth

www.msnbc.msn.com

A surprise meteor shower spotted in February was probably caused by cosmic "bread crumbs," dropped by an undiscovered comet that could potentially pose a threat to Earth, astronomers announced Wednesday. "If the meteoroids can hit us, so can the comet," said Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center, who discovered the February Eta Draconids. "We don’t know whether the comet has already passed us by or is still on approach."

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Interesting Article. It is significant to me that the scientists who researched this cannot tell whether this object approaches or is already gone.

What if it is something coming? And this was our warning. I think it warrants some more research if nothing else, how is it that they know with certainty the path of elenin, yet make a statement in this article relating to the fact that comet trajectory has a rather significant margin of error.

www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by no time


Damn they just wanna make EVERYTHING a threat these days huh?

Home Grown Terrorists
Right Wing Extremists
Islamic Extremists
Christian Extremists
Unseen Comets

What's next?

Cool post. I agree with the other reply that I find it odd that scientists don't know what is going on. Unfortunately for a post like this, as with every post for the last year, it's soon to be flooded with Elenin and/or Niburu or EleniBuru nonsense. Nevermind the fact that we all know when Elenin will be here and it's not a big deal but I digress... Yeah, spooky. I regularly check spaceweather.com to see if I can get that few minute warning on something big.

reply to post by My.mind.is.mine


LOL

2nd

Okay, I read this over twice and I cannot find reference to having found the actual comet. Even the end of the story refers to trying to calculate the path by the shower of it's debris. So....Lets see here. We have a comet of some size, judging by the debris....and the debris shows the comet is known to literally cross our orbit, directly. Does anyone else think this may not be the best time to dramatically cut back funding for space observation and exploration?? There are only a couple areas where the Government actually does good and has the potential to save the world, in every sense. Space is one of them.

By this story....our next sight of this comet could be seeing it come out from behind the sun or another body that blocked our view, with a direct collision course. Oh yeah, this was definitely the time to cut all American ability to lift into space. What a silly waste of money.

Um, forgive my ignorance on scientific matters, but how can they NOT see it coming?
Perhaps someone with a better grasp on the subject matter can explain it to me?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000



The next time we see ths comet will be when it is directly on top of our heads.

so we better be wearing our helmet

Originally posted by no time
Interesting Article. It is significant to me that the scientists who researched this cannot tell whether this object approaches or is already gone.

There has to be a visual observation over several nights to figure out the arc of the comets orbit. If we cannot see it, or cannot find it, we cannot figure out what its path is. They know its there only because we passed through an unexpected trail of debris. Debris themselves do not tell us the path of the object.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Okay, I read this over twice and I cannot find reference to having found the actual comet. Even the end of the story refers to trying to calculate the path by the shower of it's debris. So....Lets see here. We have a comet of some size, judging by the debris....and the debris shows the comet is known to literally cross our orbit, directly. Does anyone else think this may not be the best time to dramatically cut back funding for space observation and exploration?? There are only a couple areas where the Government actually does good and has the potential to save the world, in every sense. Space is one of them.

By this story....our next sight of this comet could be seeing it come out from behind the sun or another body that blocked our view, with a direct collision course. Oh yeah, this was definitely the time to cut all American ability to lift into space. What a silly waste of money.

That is duly noted, the fact that they seem to have no direct knowledge of the object that spawned these meteoroids is not only comical, but also very scary. Or since this is a conspiracy forum, possibly the "don't know what it is" is code for "this is classified top-secret".

reply to post by CodyOutlaw


Well I'm no expert (famous Glenn Beck line lol) but I don't think space radar exists. Unless someone is watching that tiny piece of sky at that exact moment, it could easily be missed.

Originally posted by defcon5

Originally posted by no time
Interesting Article. It is significant to me that the scientists who researched this cannot tell whether this object approaches or is already gone.

There has to be a visual observation over several nights to figure out the arc of the comets orbit. If we cannot see it, or cannot find it, we cannot figure out what its path is. They know its there only because we passed through an unexpected trail of debris. Debris themselves do not tell us the path of the object.

I was referring in my post to the comments made about the difficulty in absolutely knowing a comet's trajectory. I was not inferring that they should know this comet's trajectory with no knowledge of the objects size, density, etc.

The comments in the article about how radiation and the sun affect trajectory, made me a little uneasy about the absolute certainty scientists have about the one that is due to pass us soon.

Originally posted by CodyOutlaw
Um, forgive my ignorance on scientific matters, but how can they NOT see it coming?

It might be obscured behind another object yet, it could be at an odd angle, the time when its potentially visible to scopes may not be times that those scopes can get an image of it (poor visibility, in daylight, etc), and a thousand other reasons.

As they quite correctly said in the movie Armageddon:

President: Dan, we didn't see this thing coming?
Truman: Well, our object collision budget's about a million dollars a year. That allows us to track about three percent of the sky, and begging your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky.

From what I read in the article (and no one else has mentioned) is that its debris from a "suspected" long period comet that was leftover from the last time it went by.

They also 'suspect' that the last time was anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand years ago, and maybe I misread but they predict its reappearance in 2016 through 2023 - and it won't show up again till 2076.....

Two thoughts occurring to me on these points.....

1. Elenin is a long period comet (yeah I know...I hate to feed that scenario) but if what they 'suspect' is true, could it have been from Elenin the last time it swung by?

2. How the HELL do they know when its coming back if they don't even know when it came by last? How can they even pretend to predict its next arrival? Anyone? Clarity???

I have a question why don't we have a planetary defence system for comets meteors alien invasion? I mean ronald regans star wars program, couldn't that be used for anything that poses a threat to earth? we have all those nukes everywhere put them to some good use

ROFL........it's gone from "unseen and unknown" to "Next time we see it it's gonna hit us??!!

99% of comets are unknown - and every single one of them "could" hit Earth!

Heck even the known ones "could" hit Earth - all you got to do is alter their orgits sufficiently .......

Perhaps there'll be reason to worry about it when we know something about it - but most likely not - most likely the comet won't hit Earth - or even come close. In fact I reckon there's probably little chance "we" will ever actually find it.

If we worried about everything we don't know of that "could hit Earth" we'd all die of apoplexy!!

Originally posted by Forevever
1. Elenin is a long period comet (yeah I know...I hate to feed that scenario) but if what they 'suspect' is true, could it have been from Elenin the last time it swung by?

The timing of the meteor shower (ie. The position that the debris trail was left in relation to our orbit) obviously does not mach up with the orbit of Elenin.

Originally posted by Forevever
2. How the HELL do they know when its coming back if they don't even know when it came by last? How can they even pretend to predict its next arrival?

They are probably extrapolating based on the last recorded encounter with a debris trail at this time of year (in this position on Earths orbital path). Since comets follow an orbit like the earth, they can predict when it should come back around. If there is no recorded history of a meteor shower at that time of year, then they are simply guessing.

Originally posted by gaurdian2012
I have a question why don't we have a planetary defence system for comets meteors alien invasion? I mean ronald regans star wars program, couldn't that be used for anything that poses a threat to earth? we have all those nukes everywhere put them to some good use

How many times do you want to be bankrupt, or are you prepared to live in a police/slavery state to pay for it all??

Thank you guys for answering my question.
It is a big-ass sky, indeed

Originally posted by gaurdian2012
I have a question why don't we have a planetary defence system for comets meteors alien invasion? I mean ronald regans star wars program, couldn't that be used for anything that poses a threat to earth? we have all those nukes everywhere put them to some good use

We do, don't we? HAARP? I mean, wasn't it supposed to be a new "Star Wars" defense weapon that could stop "outside" threats? I know, HAARP comes up a lot where it doesn't belong, but truly, this was one of the intentions of HAARP.