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Shoemaker-Levy 9's 10th Anniversary
Chuck1318 writes "July 16 is the 10th anniversary of the first impact of pieces of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on the planet Jupiter. The Planetary Society is marking this occasion with a call for applications for Shoemaker grants to fund "amateur and underfunded professional observers anywhere in the world." Shoemaker-Levy 9 created impact features on Jupiter that were larger than the Earth and helped stimulate the search for possible earth-impacting objects."
And on topic: i've met very few who ever have had adequate funding. hurray for more funding, is all I have to say.
You can thank Jupiter for catching comets like shoemaker-levy. More recent theories indicate that Jupiter acts like a giant hoover, catching debris that would otherwise end up hitting earth, which in turn would make advanced life on Earth impossible due to frequency of large impacts.
Even as it is, impacts the size of the Meteor that hit Tunguska, Siberia in 1907 probably happen every at least century or so - and if that happened over New York, you can say goodbye NY..
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I would think that the other outer planets would play a significant role in that theory. While jupiter is on one side of the solar system, meteors could swing in from the other side and pound the earth. I would think that all the outer planets would form a net to catch asteroids. Of course, that's if you treat the univserse as 2D, there's still stuff approaching from vectors perpendicular to the general orientation of the solar system. In that sense, the large outer planets could actually deflect stuff into the earth if it's initially on a vector that wouldn't ordinarily meet with the earth.
Now the gas giants do indeed "hoover" up a lot of the space debris that might otherwise hit the inner planets you also have to realize that they're also responsible for causing debris from the Kuniper Belt and Oort Cloud to decend out of their respective places in the outer Solar System into the inner Solar System. Due to gravitational perturbation.
So I'd argue the gas giants are sort of a mixed blessing overall.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
I was an undergrad at the time; we were watching Jupiter with the Steward Observatory 21-inch telescope. The actual impact events were not visible from Earth, but as Jupiter spun around, we saw the scars left by the impacts. Very exciting stuff!
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10 years? It really does seem like yesterday. Shit! I was thirteen! My dad took me up to the local science type place where they had telescopes lined up. I peered through the telescope and I was able to see "a bruise" on Jupiter! Jupiter! I thought it was quite cool and I've been hooked ever since. I hope more celestial events like this take place in my lifetime.
wouldn't it make much more sense to measure this in Jupiter years instead of earth years.
Well your doubts have no basis in fact, as this link shows.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Alright, even though earlier in the article other forces are named as the main actors on Oort Cloud comets. I read the part that you quote as "once the comet is nudged towards the sun, the bigger planets can then influence the orbits so they become shorter".
:)
Why do I still doubt it? Jupiter mass is only 0.001 solar mass, Oort cloud distance is in the order of magnitude of 100,000 AU, gravity influence decreases with distance squared, and comets are small.
But hey, the Oort Cloud has not even been proven to exist so why are we bickering?
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As I recall, this was the biggest event on the internet to that date. There were lots of mirrors setup to handle the load, while small by todays standards, was the taxing for websites.. The net is where pictures from Hubble, and other space/land based cameras showed up first.
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