Not so all that very unusual...
Posted on 04/29/2016 6:58:04 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Most known comets come from the Oort cloud -- a cold, giant shell surrounding the solar system like a giant, thick soap bubble. Scientists estimate that the Oort cloud is made of trillions of icy bodies that lie as far as 100,000 times Earth's distance from the sun.
Astronomers focused on a comet named C/2014 S3 using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii. The comet, discovered in 2014, is a little more than twice as far away from the sun as Earth is. The 860-year-long orbit of the comet, known as S3 for short, suggested it came from the distant Oort cloud.
Unlike other known comets, S3 was nearly tailless -- up to 100,000 times or so less active than typical comets on similar orbits. Comets grow more active when they approach the sun and their ice heats up, becoming the gas making up a comet's tail. The lack of activity from S3 suggests it was ice-poor instead of ice-rich, unlike previous known comets from the Oort cloud.
Follow-up observations of dust in this comet's stubby tail -- conducted with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope -- revealed that S3 more closely resembled stony asteroids from the asteroid belt than a typical comet. Their model of this new comet's dust confirmed that it came off the comet itself, as opposed to originating from a piece of rock that may have collided with the comet.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Not so all that very unusual...
The ice gap is objectionable, and I think the Democrats have a plan to rectify this by making all comets equally ice-poor.
Er, thanks.But as for the story. All we know is that we have a thimbleful of knowledge about the origins of the earth in comparison with the dumpster truck load we do not know.
And when we have two thimbles full — we’ll know twice as much as we know now.
It’s just a baked potato on steroids (as in asteroids).
Obama can issue an EO and remedy it. After all, he believes he is a god.
A thimbleful seems a lot to an ant. We tend to forget that in terms of all there is to know we are ant-size.
Comets are strange, when you’re a stranger
Faces are ugly, when you’re alone
I think Jim Morrison’s brain may have been squirming like a toad.
In mute nostril agony.
Comet....it will make your teeth turn green
Comet...it tastes like gasoline
Comet...it’ll make you vomit
So get some Comet, and vomit, today
The version I recall was:
Comet...it tastes like Listerine
Comet....it makes your teeth turn green
Comet...it makes you vomit
So get some Comet, and vomit, today.
Been a long time since I heard that rhyme.
There, fixed it!
Regards,
Nope.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?orb=1;sstr=2014+S3
It is currently (4/29/2016) about 6.5 AU from the sun, 6.6 AU from earth. At discovery (9/22/2014) it was 1.6 AU from earth, 2.1 from the sun. Last observation was on 10/25/2014 at 1.2 AU from earth, 2.2 AU from sun (therefore near opposition).
Aphelion distance (Q) is about 179 AU, semimajor axis (a) is 90.5 AU and perihelion = 2*a-Q = 2.05 AU. (Inconsistencies due to rounding.) Uncertainty in semimajor axis is about 15 AU, in Aphelion about 30 AU, but uncertainty is perihelion is probably much, much smaller.
I think the Bible has that pretty much covered.
Regards,
It would be much easier to ignore all the accumulating evidence and stick with the “it appeared by magic” theory.
Current scientific theory seems to pull the rabbit out of the hat, Except the magician doesn’t know how t the rabbit go in the hat.
What is the current scientific theory?
Multiverses. At least that is tyne po science favorite.
Multiverses are speculative cosmology. I was thinking more in line of theories for Solar System formation considering the topic of the article.
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