Episode #039: Meteors and Fireballs

"GnatFlix" reply

Look up the 1962 nuclear test "Starfish Prime" --- above the atmosphere, created a massive EMP that knocked out electrical systems in Hawaii, 1,450 km distant. Check Ben Davidson's Suspicioius0bservers site to get a picture of a possible cyclic recurring GALACTIC Electromagnetic Sheet, that seems to be affecting stars as it propagates outward from the galactic core... "Coming soon to your neighborhood." Seriously, the theory and observations point to a 26,000 year periodicity. Some folks might say it sounds suspiciously like another Kozmick Konvergence in the gathering bushel of periodicities governing Earthly and Human affairs. reply

A new comet arriving in its long fall from the Oort cloud has an orbital path that's almost indistinguishable from a parabolic escape trajectory as you would get from an intergalactic object coming from a great distance outside our system. But it only has the velocity resulting from its falling in toward the sun --- NOT an escape velocity that would by itself take it outward bound heading away from this system. According to physicists, the escape velocity of a given mass is dependent on how far from the sun an object is at its starting point. Theoretically, most comets that appear in the inner system started falling inward from the Oort Cloud possibly many millions of years ago. Perturbed in its placid orbit by some impulse from maybe other objects in that lonely region, or by the nudge of a reasonably nearby nova, it loses just enough velocity to begin falling toward the sun---- imperceptibly at first, but accelerating over time. This means that its maximum velocity -- as long as it does not steal energy in a close "slingshot pass" by one of the Gas Giants -- can never reach escape velocity from the sun. It is most likely to enter the inner system traveling at a relatively high speed, and an orbital track very similar to a parabola, but it's most likely to be an extremely elongated ellipse that will bring it back to our neighborhood in a few tens of thousands of years, unless it's slowed by a close pass to the sun or one of the gas giants. In fact, Estonian astronomer Ernst �pik and Dutch Astronomer Jan Oort sorted this out between 1930 and 1950 observing cometary paths, and reasoning that Comets with apparently parabolic orbits could not have accreted their mass while in the sort of orbit that brings'em plunging into the inner system. ---- Oort calculated a range of aphelia from the observed paths of some single-appearance comets, and reasoned that there must be some spherical region of our system --- defined by the minimum 20,000 AU aphelia he was seeing in his figures --- where comets could grow by sweeping up the primordial dust of the early system and orbit undisturbed by the gravitational collapse that formed the inner planetary disk. --- Later refinements suggest an outermost limit of fer-Pete's-sake 50,000 AU for the outermost Shell that is named to honor Oort. Poor �pik gets nothing. Sad. reply

Skeptical Challenge to Novel Hypothesis is --- Yes --- fundamental to actual Scientific Method, as even seventh-grade science classes taught students in 1962 in California Public Schools. If unexpected results for a carefully prepared and calibrated set of tests cannot be duplicated by other competent experimenters starting from similar materials and procedures, that tends to seriously undermine the validity of the original claim. Contrariwise, if they DO produce substantially similar results, that tends to confirm the original claim. The refusal of a wide segment of the present alleged "scientific" community to reveal their data, methods, and calculations, shows they are frauds, just for that refusal. The fact that people actually accept this sickening perversion of the most basic scientific standards is just another proof that we are living in a time of Demons. About the realization that many meteors are actually part of recurring streams.. This is actually very helpful, in the sense that we can now anticipate the approach of those known streams of meteors that are the debris of Ancient Comets. We now understand that they Are following the orbits of the original body that continues to break up and shed particles. Those can range in size from grains of sand to the size of a skyscraper or sports stadium or the central business district of a mid-sized metropolis. Just about gives us time to make peace with our creator if we spot the darned thing a few hours out. reply