Comets


Meteor

'Impact: Earth!' Asteroid, Comet and Damage Simulation Website

Image
© Purdue University
Purdue University has created "Impact: Earth!," a website where anyone can see the simulated effects when a comet or asteroid of variable size, density, and speed hits Earth. Many people believe that asteroid and comet impacts have played a major role in the history of Earth, and Purdue has provided us with an inside look at how previous impacts might affect us today.

The Interactive website is said to be scientifically accurate enough to be used by many different branches of the government including NASA and the Department of Homeland Security.


Comment: Now we feel much more "reassured" to know that NASA and the Department of Homeland Security are using the simulation, and yet don't give the topic its deserved urgent attention. Unless, of course, they are using the program to calculate the best location for their private underground bunkers.


It is also user-friendly and visual enough to be used by schools as an interactive teaching aid for elementary students. This adds a possible new and exciting way for kids to be physically hands on and learn about the earth and how impacts might affect us.

Meteor

SETI Institute: How to Catch a Comet

Shoemaker-Levy_9
© NASA, ESA, and H. Weaver and E. Smith (STScI)A NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, taken on May 17, 1994, with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in wide field mode.
Four and a half billion years ago, a fluffy "snowball" coalesced out of the cloud of ice, dust and debris still surrounding our Sun. Most of the snowballs like it later merged to become the planets we know. This one, however, had a chance flyby with a young planet, probably Jupiter. Jupiter's gravity propelled it out into the far reaches of the Solar System, where it remained in deep freeze, among many others like it, as a member of the so-called Oort cloud.

Eventually, the tug of gravity from a passing star slowed it down ever so slightly, and that was enough to send it plummeting back toward the Sun, into the region where it had formed billions of years earlier. By a great quirk of irony Jupiter was again in its path. This time, the planet's gravity captured it into a long, elliptical orbit. On July 7, 1992, it executed a cosmic hole-in-one, passing through Jupiter's slender ring and breaking apart under the planet's ripping tides.

On the night of March 24, 1993, astronomers Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy were searching the skies when they noted an oddly shaped blotch near Jupiter. It was a comet to be sure, but quite unusual in shape. The next morning it became known as Shoemaker-Levy 9, or SL9 for short. With additional detections, its prior history as a body disrupted by Jupiter became clear. As new data accumulated, however, SL9 became even more remarkable, because astronomers realized that it had evaded Jupiter for the last time. In July 1994, the world watched as the broken fragments of SL9 plunged into Jupiter one by one. Few comets are ever featured on the front page of the New York Times, but the July 19 headline read, "Earth-Sized Storm and Fireballs Shake Jupiter as a Comet Dies." SL9 went out with a bang. The impacts left behind blotches in Jupiter's clouds but, after a few months, they faded away. End of story.

Or so we thought. As we have just published in the journal Science Express, this story has an unexpected epilogue.

Meteor

SOTT Focus: Planet-X, Comets and Earth Changes by J.M. McCanney

Planet-X Comets and Earth Changes Cover
© jmccanneyscience.com press

Planet-X, Comets & Earth Changes
by James M. McCanney
Minneapolis, MN: jmccanneyscience.com press, 2007 (first published in 2002)
182 pp.

A new model of the Universe

A scientific revolution in the theories of the nature of comets, solar system formation and astronomical phenomena in general is long overdue. For example, the impossibilities and contradictions inherent in the "dirty snowball comet model" and the "nebular collapse" theory of the origin of the solar system are legion. The theories fall short of explaining observed phenomena, but you'll never hear the scientists promoting them admit as much. Unfortunately, it seems that in all their mental excavations, the mass-produced scientists of our time have dug themselves into a trench of dreary proportions, carried along by the inertial stream of their cherished professors' naïve opinions. In fact, they can't even tell how deep they are in it, or that their theories are as woefully outdated as the mastodon fossils of which they catch passing glimpses. And thanks to James McCanney's work over the last thirty-odd years, they find themselves plunged, in the words of Mullah Nasr Eddin, "into the deepest galoshes that have ever been worn on sweaty feet."

James McCanney is something of a maverick in the scientific community. Having taught physics and mathematics at Cornell University, he was ousted because of pressure put on University authorities by professors in the astronomy department who didn't like what he was publishing. In that sense, academia is a tad like life in the Mob: "You can't say these things. If you do, we'll ruin you." But while McCanney may have suffered the fate of any scientist who attempts to go against the grain, his theories continue to hold up, predicting newly observed phenomena without having to resort to the "creeping crud" of widely accepted, bogus theories (McCanney's term for the shameless "revision" of old theories to account for unexpected observations).

Meteor

Hyperactive Comet Hartley 2 Is a Spiky Mystery for Astronomers

Image
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMDA stunning close-up photo of Comet Hartley 2 from the Nov. 4, 2010 flyby performed by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. This close-up view of comet Hartley 2 was captured by the spacecraft's Medium-Resolution Instrument.
Houston - Comet Hartley 2, the icy "space drumstick" photographed by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft last year, is an active object that still perplexes scientists as it travels through the solar system.


Comment: Comets are NOT "dirty snowballs". Perhaps the reason this comet (and all others) still "baffle" space scientists is because they have no clue about the true nature of comets.


Deep Impact visited Hartley 2 in November, revealing what one scientist described as "our favorite little hyperactive small comet."

Hartley 2 rotates around a central axis much as Earth does, scientists have revealed. But the comet also rolls around its long axis like a spinning bowling pin. Make that a spiky bowling pin: The rough edges of Hartley 2's surface are dotted with rocky spires that can reach 230 feet (70 meters) high.

Meteor

SOTT Focus: Comet Elenin Update!

Comment:
In close proximity to the upcoming March 15 alignment of Comet Elenin, which is just a few days away, there has been an earthquake in China, a big one in Japan (8.9), a new late winter storm in Turkey and Greece and yet another volcanic eruption in Indonesia. We noted an X-class solar flare a day or so ago, too. All of these things may be related to the approach of Comet Elenin. The following was posted to Laura Knight-Jadczyk's blog on 10 March 2011.


Planet-X Comets and Earth Changes Cover
© jmccanneyscience.com press

Today we have an update on Comet Elenin from our astronomer friend. Before I get to that, let me just reassure folks that there is NOT going to be a pole shift in the next week or so as certain raving nutzoids have been spamming all over the net. Also, Comet Elenin is NOT going to hit Earth (which is not to say that other things won't at some point in space and time). However, there are a few things about this comet that are extremely interesting in view of the plasma comet theory of James McCanney. Again, I suggest that readers get a copy of this book and get up to speed on this theory and how comets can affect our entire solar system electromagnetically, and how that can dramatically affect our sun and therefore planet Earth. There is an increasing body of evidence that electromagnetic disturbance of our Sun is directly related to earthquakes, volcanism, and weather on our planet.

So, with that in mind, let's have a look at some new predictions for what relationships the planets of our solar system might form with the incoming body. Our astronomer friend - who wishes to remain anonymous for the present, but I can tell you that he works at a large observatory - has run the algorithm with the latest orbital elements available on Elenin. Here is the animation:

Meteor

SOTT Focus: Spectacular Russian rocket launch - more evidence of comet dust loading our atmosphere

Image
Earlier today SOTT posted this video of a rocket launch cum 'UFO spiral'. The person who uploaded it to YouTube managed to convince him or herself that the spectacular display was the result of UFOs "taking over control of the rocket" once it reached a certain altitude. Well I've since located other videos of the launch minus the misleading text and the "blinking lights" (which appear to have been added later for effect, if not for outright disinformation purposes). Here is a YouTube video entitled 'Launch of the Soyuz 2 rocket carrying Glonass-K satellite':


No blinking lights surrounding the rocket and no text to tell you it's aliens from another planet taking remote control of it either.

Meteor

Another UFO/Comet Worm Hole or Missile Trace

What's going on in the sky?

Image

Meteor

In Case You Thought We Were Safe: Earth Under Threat From Dark Comets

Comets could be the most significant impact hazard to Earth, with sky surveys underestimating the number that are potentially devastating by a factor of between 10 and 100, British astrophysicists say.

Astronomers may be missing these so-called 'dark comets' because their icy and reflective surfaces have become hidden under an obscuring layer of dust.


Comment: We recommend reading the works of James McCanney, especially his Plasma Theory of Comets, to understand that comets are not "dirty snowballs" after all.


Image
© NASAUnrecognised risk: Earth may lie in the path of many thousands of unseen 'dark' comets.
Near Earth objects (NEOs) are comets or asteroids that have been nudged into a possible collision path with the Earth. The international program to discover NEOs; Spaceguard, which includes NASA's NEO program, has identified around 6,000 NEOs so far, most of which are asteroids.

Meteor

Comet Spiral Russia February 26, 2011

A recent sighting of another strange object over Severodvinsk Russia captured February 26, 2011.

Image

comet,russia,feb, 26,2011

Comment: For more information about this type of phenomenon see:
Dome of the Rock UFO and Kazakhstan Comet - Something Chaotic This Way Comes


Meteor

Closest Ever View of a Comet: NASA Spacecraft Flies Just 112 Miles From Tempel 1

Image
© NASA/JPLThis photo shows an image from NASA's Stardust mission of comet Tempel 1 taken on February 14
Nasa today used one of its craft to revisit a comet at close range for the first time in the history of space exploration.

The vessel Stardust flew within 112 miles of the Tempel 1 comet as it hurtled past at 24,000 miles an hour at 4.37am this morning.

Scientists confirmed the encounter, which took place 210million miles from Earth, had been a success 25 minutes later and that Stardust had taken 72 high-resolution pictures as planned.

It has now begun beaming back pictures taken during its fly-by. Nasa's Chris Jones said all the images are stored on the craft and it will take another six hours for everything to be downloaded.

The photos will let researchers compare how Tempel 1 looks now with its appearance in 2005 when a probe from the Deep Impact craft was deliberated slammed into it.