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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."
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.
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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First of all, one nitpick: Meteors don't move through space; a particle only becomes a meteor when it begins burning up in the atmosphere. A particle falling into earth's gravity well will build up kinetic energy equal to the potential energy it is giving up, so it will have at least escape velocity from the earth when it reaches atmosphere and becomes a meteor, 11 km/sec. Long period comets fall into the Sun's gravity well from just about the top, so its kinetic energy will be almost escape velocity from its distance from the sun at any time. At the earth's orbit, its velocity would be (um, mumble 30 km/sec times the square root of two, mumble) about 42 km/sec. Short period comets would have whatever orbital speed is determined by its orbit.
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.