What if ISON fragments as it shoots around the sun. Can anyone translate the deceleration of the fragments such that they could potentially hit earth?
Quoting: Anonymous Coward 47820629 First of all, if there is something you do not understand about a paper I present, send me a message about it before you go post based on your misunderstanding. I presented this paper before, I'm sure that's how you found it. You have taken an aspect unrelated to what I presented about it to try to suggest that there's a risk of impact if ISON fragments. There is no risk of impact, even if it fragments. The fragments essentially continue to follow the orbital path of the original comet but with locations along the orbit that diverge over time - the deceleration mentioned in the paper is radial, along the velocity vector of the comet.
"The deceleration Γ is a result of the momentum transfer between the two fragments due to their different outgassing rates and masses.
It is measured in radial direction only..."
"The parameters are used to constrain the fragmentation event dynamically through the time Ts when the splitting happened,
the radial Vr, transverse Vt and normal Vn components of the separation velocity of the secondary fragment relative to the primary one, and the deceleration parameter Γ of the secondary relative to the primary component.
Vr points in the direction of the radius vector of the comet, positive along the radius vector..."
Moreover, the deceleration is nowhere near enough to produce the change in velocity required to divert ISON into an impact trajectory, even if it
were oriented in a direction that could that (it isn't).
"The coarse histogram distribution in Fig. 2 suggests that
long-period and new comets tend to produce fragments
subject to decelerations Γ of 10^–4 - 10^–3 x solar gravity, while the fragments of short-period comets show on the average smaller Γ values."
10^-3 solar gravity at ISON's perihelion when solar gravity is at its greatest is about 0.038 m/s^2. At that rate, it would take 47.5 years of constant acceleration that high to achieve the necessary 57 km/s delta-V needed to alter ISON's orbit into an earth-collision trajectory at perihelion. Obviously, since the deceleration actually experienced by the fragments is a function of solar gravity, that deceleration will rapidly decrease as solar distance increases, plus the fragments don't have "47.5 years" to wait to be put onto an earth-collision trajectory; they'd be long gone by then, and last but not least the vector of the deceleration is along the comet's velocity vector which is about 90 degrees wrong for putting it into an earth-collision trajectory. To put it into an earth-collision trajectory at perihelion requires the velocity vector to point at the sun.
So to answer your question in a single word, no.