Schwassmann-Wachmann 73P; Here's what I learned about its trajectory

SO, did you check out the near earch asteroid in May?

It's not too late. Learn to garden this year. Can your own food. Learn to be as self-sufficient as you can be. Don't buy grocery food to stock up, either can it yourself, or if you want bulk, find yourself a mormon friend and go to their church cannery with them (they have wet pack and dry pack as I understand it). Home canned food is better and lasts longer.

Find friends...you'll need them and they'll need you.

it's not nice to make friends for what they can do for you

OP: For me, as I've said earlier in the thread (when I wasn't logged in), the worry is about the smaller fragments which aren't currently detectable, but which are big enough to cause problems should they intercept Earth. If the breakup was caused by an impact from another object, then the smaller fragments will on average have diverged much further from the original orbit than the larger ...

I'm not worried about teotwawki, and it seems unlikely we will be hit by anything large enough to cause a 200m high tsunami, but I'm concerned about a more widespread but less lethal scattering of impacts

S.O., I believe and have said elsewhere here that 73P hit something in space and caused the comet to rupture. Since we seem to be into analogies in this thread this would be similar to a billiard table where the billiard balls collectively would represent the comet and the white cue ball used on the break would represent an object in space. The difference, of course, is the reverse action. The scenario in space would have the billiard balls smashing into the "stationary" white cue ball, but the result would be the same. The collection of billiard balls would be violently scattered into every direction just as the billiard balls are on the break. The same thing has happened to the comet.

Naturally, this wouldn't be a big deal out in the middle of "empty" space---it happens all of the time I'm sure, but the fact that this is getting so close to Earth is the disturbing part.

so where is the govs secret weaponery now ?

Hmmm... Makes sense, kind of like a wave pattern of expanding and contracting. That suggests that there are forces keeping the fragments within the boundaries of an orbit.

In any case, not good.

58152:

Look at the photos of the fragments hitting Jupiter. Not all fragments will scurry away from the point of impact. In fact, they stay within a pattern. The analogy was a "shotgun" pattern. Spreading slowly from a close pattern.

I think this is because of the rate of speed at which they are traveling. 40km per second with no atmosphere to slow them down (and solar wind is an expression--it has little or no bearing on slowing anything).

So to use your analogy, take a billard ball, throw it at 40km per second and then hit it with a smaller object, watching how far from the pathway it redirects.

This is why I was so interested in ScienceOnly's post. A fragmenting comet on a flyby close to earth. That is like pointing a machine gun at a barn 300 yards away. You may not be accurate, but it is still dangerous!

2574, admittedly I may have oversimplified a bit. My thought was that it may have hit a slightly larger object than 73P itself. My feeling is the fragmented parts are now impacting other debris which has caused the extensive fragmetation going on.

And, I agree with you to a point about the inertial effects. Even if the comet fragments were scattered in every direction, inertia would keep all of the fragments moving in the same general path the original comet was headed as well as in their new trajectories after fragmentation. This is only because there is no friction in a vaccum.

This is no fucking good...
Look fragment B evolving into some strange snake complex...

[link to www.eso.org]

2574, I realize your point. The pattern would indeed be similar to a shotgun effect. But, a little more erratic in the spreading of the comet fragments.

WTF ! That sure is one clear picture of the things to come

Fragment B looks something bigger...
The picture shows an immense dust cloud with many objects inside...

This is very weird!

WTF ! That sure is one clear picture of the things to come
-----------------

Yea, compared to all the crappy, photoshopped ones we always get from NASA.

My Two Cents Update:

Not afraid yet.

These tracked items are too far away to be a direct threat.

It would take an unmittigated massive third force such as a massive CME from the Sun timed just right to nudge any number of THESE things either into Earth's pathway or possibly Earth's gravitational pull.

NOTE:
Jupiter is directly out beyond Earth at this point whether that gravitational pull is an additional factor-- who knows?

[link to www.fourmilab.ch]
[ Change from "icons" to "images" and hit "update" ]

Are there OTHER things in the mix?

update page on 73P, showing progression of the comet and fragments through April

[link to skyandtelescope.com]

fragment B is now in 8 pieces

FYI. Take her for what she is worth, but I recall back in April of 2005 Sorcha Faal reporting ..." in the Artic region thousands of missile launches from both Russian and American military forces..directed out of the earth's atmosphere into the outer space regions..." I find this odd since Russia and America are not the best of friends. Could this be how the comet fragmented? Also, don't forget we have been told "that in the event of a space object impacting earth, we would not be told..."

No Sorcha Faal is beyond fringe, my research shows she writes from an insane asylum in the Bronx. She's really 40 years old, a chronic smoker, overweight, on heavy psychotropic medications. Her daughter Bobby Jo sometimes visits and records her mutterings, later she'll play Black Sabbath and the recordings putting together the reports that are created. Sorcha Faal doesn't exist, it's all made up.

Is there a link to a government official saying that we will not be told?

If there is I'm going to sneak off to a mine up here in the great north....

Sorcha Faal... plain and simple answer...

It's an anagram - rearrange the letters and it spells: "as of Rachal" (Booth)

Link of not being told by government:

[link to www.space.com]

Right now--
Sunspot 875 which is small but notably growing is the only candidate for that third force...

[link to www.spaceweather.com]

"BIG SUNSPOT: "It's only a few days old from our perspective, but this baby should be interesting in the days to come,"

[link to www.spaceweather.com]

check this out: [link to www.aerith.net]

Asteroids and Secrecy: If End is Nigh, Do You Want to Know?
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
24 February 2003


I remember, I posted that one here. 2003! Wow!

Mayday

Through a protocol developed at a 1999 workshop in Torino, Italy, and subsequently adopted as de facto procedure by the IAU's Working Group on NEOs (WGNEO), astronomers decide if a future impact prediction is sufficiently important to warrant a careful independent check before public announcement.? (There is an intention to be open, but it is recognized that errors and cries of "Wolf!" are much more likely to happen than actual impacts, so the desire is to weed out the mistakes before making an official public announcement.)? If a predicted impact meets certain criteria (based on impact probability and size of impactor, as codified in the Torino Impact Hazard Scale [Binzel, 2000]), then a 72-hour process begins of peer-review by a subcommittee of the WGNEO.? After that process is concluded, the IAU may post on its web-site an official confirmation that the prediction has been checked.?



??????????? Because of a failure (at least in the public relations sense) of the system that happened in autumn 2000 (regarding the small object 2000 SG344), the 72-hour period may be changed in the near future and there is increasing emphasis on the need to avoid secrecy in the future.? The hope is that the news media will wait, before publicizing a predicted impact possibility, for official confirmation that the prediction is valid, without astronomers being required to keep all information about the matter secret.



??????????? Various journalistic protocols, rapidly changing in the age of the Internet, then govern the public dissemination of information about potential impacts.? In the past, various entities (including, for example, the Press Officer of the American Astronomical Society) have facilitated dissemination of news about NEOs, but no formal procedures exist.? Neither do any formal procedures exist, that we know of, for information about potential impacts to be considered or acted upon by national or international governments or other entities.? Informally, NASA's NEO Program Office at JPL is kept "in the loop" and its personnel are, no doubt, expected to report matters of importance up the chain of command in NASA.? Similar organizational reporting procedures presumably operate within other entities that are likely to discover NEOs or witness an actual impact, like the U.S. Air Force Space Command, which operates satellites that detect major bolides in the Earth's atmosphere.? However, there surely is an early disconnect in formal procedures when the IAU confirms an impact prediction by a posting on its web page.





Potential Structure



??????????? Given the widespread public interest in the impact hazard and the potential seriousness of an impact, there ought to be formal procedures for evaluating information about potential impacts, an outline of what should be done in various cases, and assignment of responsibilities to relevant agencies.? Evaluation of potential impact predictions needs to go beyond the verification of orbital calculations, which is what the IAU WGNEO's peer-review process currently focusses on.? The 2000 SG344 event showed that there was an unexpectedly great uncertainty in estimating the size, hence potential dangerousness, of the potential impactor -- it could have been quite serious (Tunguska-scale) or quite innocuous (if the object is a wayward booster rocket rather than an asteroid).? Hazard evaluation and responsibility for making public announcements should be an activity expanded far beyond astronomers to the broader civilian and military communities of experts with experience in dealing with natural hazards and disasters.



??????????? We briefly consider this topic from both a U.S.-national and an international perspective.



??????????? U.S. National.? Initial information about potential impacts will likely be developed within NASA or the Air Force.? NASA's NEO Program Office has responsibility within NASA, but it is a very small operation and is in the infancy of developing communications and response protocols for NASA as a whole.? The Air Force Space Command and the Air Force-sponsored LINEAR search project (operated by M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory) would be the first to handle NEO information obtained from Air Force programs.? Other entities may have much more experience in dealing with analogous issues.? For example, NOAA's Space Environment Center, in Boulder, Colorado, forecasts space weather (e.g. solar storms that may disturb the Earth's geomagnetic environment) and operates jointly with the Air Force the Space Weather Operations (SWO), which is the national and world warning center for space disturbances that can affect operations in space.



??????????? NEOs could be added to the SEC's duties.? Alternatively, its joint operation of the SWO might serve as a model for creation of an interagency center that would deal with NEO issues.? At the moment, there is no movement toward advancing beyond the ad hoc procedures currently in place.? The next step would be to organize relevant national agencies that would be involved in mitigating an actual impact or dealing with issues arising from misunderstandings, "near-misses," etc.? As a matter of policy, NASA has so far declined to accept any responsibility for mitigation.? Other entities (many of them ultimately under the aegis of the National Security Advisor) that might be involved in consideration of preparation for mitigation include the Air Force, the Department of Energy (much interest and expertise in asteroid deflection, for example, already exists at Los Alamos, Sandia, and Livermore National Laboratories), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and tsunami warning entities (which are most thoroughly devenopehe Pacific Rim region).?

from:
[link to www.boulder.swri.edu]
white paper on impact hazard
Southwest Research Institute
Boulder, CO

I guess we are on our own...

She indeed may be a scammer, but I just found the article interesting. The report of the joint military exercises was reported in a Moscow paper (Moscow Times, for what that rag is worth.) The article stated, "Russia and the United States have begun joint missile defence wargames aimed at protecting vital installations in a third country in the course of future international operations, a Russian Defence Ministry release said Monday. The wargames will last until April 23rd.." Of course, this was written in April of 2005...