Rare Meteor Event to Inform on Dangerous Comets 64
David Shiga writes "September 1, 2007 may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a rare meteor shower called the alpha Aurigids, New Scientist reports. Unlike better-known displays like the Perseids that occur every year on the same date, the alpha Aurigids have only been spotted three times before, in 1935, 1986, and 1994. NASA's Peter Jenniskens predicts they will return again this year, only to disappear again for the next 50 years. Meteor showers are caused by debris shed from comets, and the rarity of the alpha Aurigids is due to the exceptionally infrequent passes of its parent comet through the inner solar system, just once every 2000 years. Studying the alpha Aurigids could help astronomers turn these rare showers into an advance warning system for long period comets with potentially dangerous orbits, which would be hard to spot ahead of a collision with Earth."
We'll if you are 72 or so (Score:1)
Re:We'll if you are 72 or so (Score:5, Funny)
Makes sense to me. As you get older you often acquire a taste for classical music.
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Cover your eyes!
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Re:We'll if you are 72 or so- Hey, try 66! (Score:2, Funny)
I am 66, and I have had 28 Lifetime events!
Uhh, lesseee... OK. So I forgot about 23 of them, but nevertheless- Respect your elders, you li'l pupsquaick!
Wait! I think I remember event #21...
No...
Ah, well it's just/. No one will notice. Fuk, just a bunchakids anyhoo!
Zzzzz..
One disaster for another (Score:3)
So instead of a collision with Earth that kills hundreds of peope,
we have a huge panic that kills thousands.
great...
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Knowing that a plane was going to crash before I got on would be different, I could actually change the outcome.
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Just sayin'.
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Energy Released: 10 million MT (MegaTons of TNT)
(Shoemaker Levy 9 collision with Jupiter: 5 million MT)
QUAKE!! Magnitude 10.3 (largest recorded Earthquake: 9.5)
Crater Diameter: 67.3 km
Crater Depth: 1.0 km
Ohh! Look at all the dust in Earth's atmosphere! It's going to block the sunlight and make it very very cold there for many years. There will be another wave of mass extinc
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How about hunters? (Score:1)
It's a good time to be a dove-hunter [ca.gov]/amateur-astronomer in California. That's going to be a beautiful pre-dawn.
This week: Perseids (Score:5, Informative)
Front-Row Seats (Score:1)
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Re:Front-Row Seats + Pontiacs (Score:1)
I suspect I am even more rural than you.
The local GM dealer (about 12 Km away) will be closing down soon, so-
l will then be subjected only to the lights of the giant Toyota dealer about 25 Km away!
TRIUMPH of our Western civilisation!
But ya gotta love that rural nightsky.
Once in a lifetime? (Score:2, Interesting)
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200 meteors / hour (Score:5, Informative)
[that's the info I wanted from the article... perfect timing since we'll be canoing with friends at that date... now, if only the god of blow-away-clouds can be with us...]
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Sounds like Tolkien's Uomo.
Day of the Triffids? (Score:3, Informative)
After which all who watched the pretty green meteors will be blind and the experimental carnivorous plants will eat them.
(Or at least that's how it went in _Day of the Triffids_ by Brian Aldiss.)
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Brian Aldiss stole the plot of John Wyndham's novel, and he didn't even change the name? What a git!
Oops! I misread the start of the Wikipedia article. It mentioned a Brian Aldiss characterization of Windham's catastrophe before it mention's Windham and I cut-and-pasted the wrong author's name. B-(
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Rare showers? how many? (Score:5, Funny)
Be honest here... how much of the sky is being watched at any one time?
I'd rather see a better effort to tracking undiscovered comets and asteroids. Or else a zillion years from now, alien archaeologists on Mars will find an AOL CD blown as ejecta from the crater that wiped out a technologically advanced race on the 3rd planet.
Re:Rare showers? how many? (Score:4, Funny)
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The LINEAR project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Near-Earth_As teroid_Research [wikipedia.org].
From the wikipedia article:
What's worrisome is that the homepage http://www.ll.mit.edu/LINEAR/ [mit.edu] is also stuck at 211,849 objects. Did they run out of fun
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Re:Rare showers? how many? (Score:4, Funny)
Boycot meteor showers! (Score:3, Funny)
Watching them only encourages them!
Shame on you for promoting the whole subject of potentially Earth-wreaking comets and their "oh-shiny" debris.
Avert your eyes!
In related news... (Score:1)
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Augrid Project (Score:4, Interesting)
Details are here [erasmatazz.com] in his website.
Re:Aurigid Project (Score:2)
I saw a small meteor shower in Tuesday night (Score:1)
Wonder if it was a prelude?
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Sorta related... (Score:2)
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d0c_1185876816 [liveleak.com]
Here's hoping the upcoming shower will be as spectacular.
snitch (Score:2)
Asteroid radar? (Score:2)