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Evidence For 200-Year-Old Comet Impact On Neptune
astroengine writes "Astronomers using ESA's Herschel space observatory have spotted evidence of a cometary impact in Neptune's upper atmosphere (publication, PDF). Whereas impact craters on rocky planetary bodies can remain for billions of years, an impact in the dynamic atmospheres of gas giants aren't obvious, especially if long periods of time have elapsed. This ultimate 'cold case' tracked the unusual distribution of carbon monoxide in Neptune's stratosphere, a sure sign it was deposited there by an external source. Once they realized they were looking at a comet impact, researchers were able to deduce when the impact occurred: 200 years ago."
You and I have different definitions of impact, but I suppose you're correct about SL9. I tend to think exploding in the atmosphere isn't an impact, but on a gaseous planet you aren't going to get much other than an airburst.
What I want to know is how we know what a comet that impacted a gas giant 200 years ago would look like in the atmosphere 200 years after the fact.
Maybe its just me, but it seems like an aweful lot of 'science' recently has been based on pure speculation. I mean, I know there are some great deductive minds out there, but until you can show me pictures of the comet that hit 200 years ago and the data showing how you tracked it to now so you know what it would look like after 200 years of atmospheric storms ...
You know what, I'm not going to even finish that thought, I call bullshit.
We can't model weather on Earth, and we have god knows how many sensors of every freaking type we've ever invented watching the planet and we can't predict what will happen tomorrow nor can we take a screenshot of the atmosphere and tell what the weather was like last year beyond what any 10 year old could guess on his/her own.
But we can detect what happened in a gas giant ... hundreds of years ago ... because we saw some light on a spectrometer?
And someone else believes this bullshit?
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