Captured Comet Becomes Moon of Jupiter

An anonymous reader writes 'Jupiter's gravity captured a comet in the mid-20th century, holding it in orbit as a temporary moon for 12 years. The comet, named 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu, is the fifth body known to have been pulled by Jupiter from its orbit around the Sun. The discovery adds to our understanding of how Jupiter interferes with objects from the 'Hilda group,' which are asteroids and comets with orbits related to Jupiter's orbit.'

Comments

The comet's shape

[R2.0]

The comet's shape was revealed to be rectilinear, with an aspect ratio comprising the squares of the first 3 non-zero positive primes.

Re:The comet's shape

[R2.0]

From Wikipedia:

"Primality of one

The importance of this theorem is one of the reasons for the exclusion of 1 from the set of prime numbers. If 1 were admitted as a prime, the precise statement of the theorem would require additional qualifications, since 3 could then be decomposed in different ways

        3 = 1 3 and 3 = 1 1 1 3 = 13 3.

Until the 19th century, most mathematicians considered the number 1 a prime, the definition being just that a prime is divisible only by 1 and itself but not requiring a specific number of distinct divisors. There is still a large body of mathematical work that is valid despite labeling 1 a prime, such as the work of Stern and Zeisel. Derrick Norman Lehmer's list of primes up to 10,006,721, reprinted as late as 1956,[4] started with 1 as its first prime.[5] Henri Lebesgue is said to be the last professional mathematician to call 1 prime.[citation needed] The change in label occurred so that the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, as stated, is valid, i.e., "each number has a unique factorization into primes."[6][7] Furthermore, the prime numbers have several properties that the number 1 lacks, such as the relationship of the number to its corresponding value of Euler's totient function or the sum of divisors function.[8]"

At least I came by it honestly.

But...

[njfuzzy]

"That's no moon!"

Good catch Jupiter

[moon3]

One can imagine that over billions of years Jupiter helped to clear-out our system from similar thrash pretty well.

Re:Good catch Jupiter

[speedtux]

Yes, it did. A planet like Jupiter may actually have been essential for complex life to develop on Earth.

Re:Good catch Jupiter

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Actually, had there been no Jupiter in our Solar system, the aliens would have probably parked the monolith in the orbit of Iapetus instead of Europa. Europa only made commuting easier for them.

Deep Thought

[ciderVisor]

"Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet." - Jack Handey

"in the mid-20th century"

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot
History for nerds. Stuff that mattered.

I'll bet if I go back 50 years, I'll find a dupe in the archive.

Re:This should be NASA's focus

[clone53421]

Yeah, and it's been thrown around the table a few times, but we still haven't figured out what sort of payment Jupiter will accept (or how to get it there). Hiring out gas giants for protection turns out to be less easy than you'd expect.

Re:This should be NASA's focus

[Red Flayer]

NASA should be spending most - if not all - of its budget preparing to avert a comet/asteroid from hitting earth.

With all due respect, I disagree. Yes, some resources should be directed at that problem. But there is so much more that can and should be done by NASA. The Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer telescopes are a good example.

But what is the point in surviving if all we are doing is treading water? Sure we could spend billions on monitoring near space for potentially dangerous objects, but IMO we're better off spending those billions on things that can advance technology.

And in the (very) long run, our currently feeble attempts at space travel may lead to the best defense against catastrophic collisions -- another colonized planet.

Re:This should be NASA's focus

[KeithJM]

Sorry, but how is colonizing another planet going to prevent a catastrophic collision?

Imagine when all of what would become the human race lived in one valley in Africa. One particularly harsh winter or dry summer could wipe out the whole species, right? If that happened today it might still be a catastrophe but humanity would go on. If we had self-sufficient colonies on other planets, an asteroid could destroy the earth without killing off humanity.