It's the end of the world as we know it: COMET ELENIN

many ^ | 6-30-2011 | many

[pgkdan]

Don’t know about the comet but do you have a link to the NASA warning?

[blue-duncan]

It saved us from the atom bomb and it will save us from a lousey comet.

[Arrowhead1952]

Too bad that map doesn’t have a 50 mile wide moat between the US and Mexico.

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-135

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

From NASA

Comet Elenin should be at its brightest shortly before the time of its closest approach to Earth on Oct. 16 of this year. At its closest point, it will be 35 million kilometers (22 million miles) from us.

[4yearlurker]

I remember those under the desk when the siren goes off days! I’m old!

[tomkat]

[AceMineral]

Never give up. Never surrender.

[blue-duncan]

I remember hiding under the kitchen table with a flashlight and a blanket over the table to shield the light during air raid siren tests during WWII. “Duck and cover” in the ‘50s was nothing. I still have shelves full of Spam from Y2k scare and rolls of plastic sheeting and duct tape from the 2003 potential terrorist chemical and biological attacks.

If I can find an old elementary school desk I’ll be all set for any comet eventuality. Do you need any Spam?

[dangerdoc]

Would that be the one with the naked space vampires?

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

This guy believes this stuff apparently...

http://ccheadliner.com/news/article_fca0c66e-1db0-11e0-93d8-001cc4c03286.html

[Boogieman]

Lol, if there was a “dwarf star” anywhere near us, we’d all be dead, since it would have shifted the Earth’s orbit out of the narrow habitable zone, so we’d all be either frozen or crispy critters.

[ApplegateRanch]

ELENIN’s comin’, hide your heart girl..

But I thought he said that he LOVES it in Cuba?!?

[ApplegateRanch]

>>>Too bad that map doesn’t have a 50 mile wide moat between the US and Mexico.
>>>>

It would, but it was non-PC to show the Rio Grande affected along with the Mississippi system.

Somehow, places in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming that are several thousand feet altitude are flooded, while part of Florida that is less than 1,000’ is left dry.

Same major flaws in other areas.

>>>>>>>>>Yes I’ve seen that map. Always wondered how the US Navy estimated that supposedly after the madrid blows.
>>>>>>>>>

Oh, and I could NEVER find any evidence that this was a Navy map; but plenty that it was created by a moonbat.

[RaceBannon]

Look! I have ONE JOB on this ship, and I am going to do it the best I can! Alright?!?

[Mr. K]

*groan*

[messierhunter]

This is what Elenin would do to the orbit of Saturn if it were a brown dwarf:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDHYXHOhpJ0

If you run the numbers on the perturbed orbital elements you find that Saturn would currently be perturbed 3.8 arcminutes out of position from its normal orbit as seen by someone on earth. Here's an image of Saturn I deliberately over-exposed to be able to measure its position relative to the background stars:

http://flickr.com/gp/astropics/879L25

At the time I recorded that, Saturn's coordinates should have been 12h 42m 29.63s, -01d 43' 23.1". According to astrometry, the detected position of Saturn was 12h 42m 30s, -01d 43' 23". Given that the resolution of the image was 2.21 arcseconds per pixel, that's as perfect as you can get.

Now here is what comet Elenin looks like in my telescope with a modified infrared sensitive camera:



Not much, is it? It's a faint little minor comet. A brown dwarf would have saturated the detector with light. You'd see nothing but a pure white image at that exposure setting.

[RaceBannon]

Is a brown dwarf that dense to effect the position of the sun as that shows??

If something is that dense and also that close, my gosh, it SHOUD be visible to the naked eye, casting shadows on the Earth NOW!

[messierhunter]

Brown dwarf stars are more massive than Jupiter, but not much larger, so yes the main difference is density (and mass) with a somewhat fixed volume. If such a thing were as close to us as Elenin it would be one of the brightest objects in the night sky. It would easily be naked eye visible.

[MHGinTN]

Well, that’s one way to clean up DC.