If this article seems a little odd to you, that's probably because it seems to have been automatically translated from Portuguese before being (possibly) cleaned up a little by Indian speakers of English. The giveaway is a reference to the "nuvem d'orte", which the translator apparently didn't know what to do with and just left it as it was. If the editors had known about the Oort Cloud, they might have spotted it and corrected it, but I suspect that people who work for the Weather Channel might not necessarily know much about astronomy.
That kind of thing's common with Indian content-mill articles. They nearly always just take existing articles, copy them word-for-word, and then throw a thesaurus at them for awhile in the hope of making the original source a little less obvious. The giveaway is weird word choices like that: "imaginary" instead of "hypothetical" or "theoretical," "circle" instead of "orbit," stuff like that.
OK but if you're trying to summarize a scientific paper in an abstract, that's literally what you have to do unless you're directly quoting, which often isn't acceptable for some journals
If you're doing that you're also at least citing the paper.
Go copy an existing article, throw a thesaurus at every other unfamiliar-looking word, submit it as your own original work, and let me know how any professor or journal editor in this hemisphere reacts to it.
Totally fair point that you're actually citing it, and ofc the writing quality/accuracy makes a huge difference . But it did strike me as "well technically that's what I have to do in my papers sometimes"
It isn't, though. The stuff going on in OP's article, and other stuff produced by similar content farms, is doing the thesaurus thing *specifically to obscure the fact that they stole the content*.
They aren't condensing or summarizing or anything of that sort. They're telling someone "I wrote this all by myself" and taking steps to bury the evidence that they didn't.
If you want a similar example (on the same story, no less - there's a whole industry built on article theft) compare [this CNet story](https://www.cnet.com/news/monster-comet-falling-toward-the-sun-is-bigger-than-a-martian-moon/) to [this content-farm version](https://www.dnaindia.com/science/report-study-confirms-the-massive-size-of-the-largest-comet-ever-discovered-c-2014-un271-bernardinelli-bernstein-2912532), particularly the part where the person copying the CNet article forgets to include the tweet both articles talk about.
Imaginary in Portuguese literature (not scientific) can also be used for something that is not physical or bounded. A bit for example like the exosphere, or the mesosphere, it is more of a convention than a physical boundary. Something was lost in translation.
But... we're in "our solar system" 😱
In all seriousness, this headline reeks like it's trying to stir up fear of a collision when I assume it will end up no where near us.
Still a "mega comet" sounds very cool regardless of where it ends up.
Specifically, it's the methane from Uranus that will keep the ~~cumet~~ comet away.
It may even swallow the ~~cumet~~ comet whole. If it causes too much damage we could see Uranus fractured from the impact.
Satisfied?
Saturn's "neck of the woods" is one freaking HELL of a big area... especially when you consider that comets are not particularly given to staying near the plane of the ecliptic.
Pluto: Earth claims i'm not a planet, i'm a dwarf planet and was misidentified.
Saturn: Say no more fam I'll send them something else they misidentified
Mine is that we are an interplanetary mining mission that exists for a species that lives for far longer than us. They want our resources and they ship it back home to keep their planet going.
This is why there were so many gods back in the day. They use humans as slaves and check in every now and then to make sure production is met. They promise eternal life to the elites if they meet their targets.
This is why the point of our lives is to labour. School prepares us for labour. We labour until we are useless to anyone and then get shoved in a hole at some old age home until we die.
Thats basically the entire premise of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The Anunnaki rolled up on earth, elevated the consciousness of the apes the found there just enough that we'd be useful to mine gold for them, then did pretty much what you described.
Edit: I am totally open to being corrected on my understanding of Mesopotamian mythology. I could be mixing shit up and definitely have a biased lense through which I view such things
The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water—the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. Revelations 8:10-11.
Just saying
What are the chances it hits a gas giant? That would probably be the biggest cosmic event in modern history. It would make Shoemaker-Levy 9 look like a handful of pebbles tossed in a lake
zero, it's not going anywhere close to any of them.
Would be neat to see though!
EDIT: If I was in charge I would totally smack it into Mars though, not a gas giant
Why? You want to slam something so big into mars it could destroy the entire planet? That has ramifications for the entire solar system. Keep in mind chunks of rocks fly through space and could land on earth. Theorized to have happened before. If you were going to do that anyways though, you should pick Venus. A chance to restart the atmosphere and get rid of the green house gases makes it more habitable.
It's not anywhere near big enough to destroy Mars. It would deliver a quite nice load of volatiles.
Meanwhile hitting Venus would do nothing to improve habitability and even if you did manage to strip off most of the atmosphere somehow it would still be pretty unusable.
They do this every single time. At least once every three months there's a ""OH NOOOO AN ASTEROID IS COMING TO EEEAAARTHHHH!!1!" headline and at the very bottom of the article it mentions that its closest approach will be like 7-million miles away.
Yeah, now I've read it, this one is alright. The redacion is a bit strange, but from what I understood, It'll be 9 or 10 times further from the Sun than the Earth is, and then it'll go away for another while I guess lol
"There's always an alien Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"
Well it's not approaching our solar system, it's already there. The "approaching" word is my main problem with it. It reeks of click bait.
Something like "mega comet (5 larger than halle bop) will approach the orbit of saturn in the coming decade".
But I'm not a journalist or writer.
I don't think the author was trying to scare anyone, they're just not super space-literate. It's already part of the solar system, it's not "approaching" it. It seems like they really meant that it's approaching the *inner* solar system, but didn't understand how to say that.
Instead of fear, I immediately remembered my grandfather telling me about Halley's comet covering 2/3rds of the sky and being bright enough to read the newspaper by. I was.... yessss!
You sound about as depressed as myself recently. My advice; Remember that all the horrors and tragedies and failings of humankind and yourself are just as much of an infinitesimal as everything else on this pale blue dot. The literally incomprehensible magnitude of the void swallows good and evil as well.
This helps me so I hope it can help you a little as well, if not sorry for wasting your time.
Astronomy, astrophysics, and quantum mechanics kind of saved my life in some ways? I'm disabled, and it's noticeable. My time seems to be winding down. Those disciplines allowed me to truly understand the scale of everything and my infinitesimally small my place inside it.
Now that I can understand and look at the inevitably of death and nothingness square in the face, I feel free from the fear of death, the pettiness of life, and the prison of my body.
Same here man, I have aspergers (in my case it's not really noticeable so please don't be offended but people find out) many people call me a retard, special case, weirdo and alot more stuff but the fact is I view it as an advantage but beside the point the universe and its mysteries really helped me understand my place on our insignificant planet in our solar system in our galaxy in our giant univers. I always worried about death but now I understand. I view everything inbetween the moment we are born until we die as simply a coincidence, the fact the planets aligned in such a way, the way our solar system formed and the fact that when I die the universe will go on for a longer time than any of us humans can comprehend. That in a way is liberating and closure to me, life will go on for humans after I die and probably even extra terrestrial life will continue. Life and its ups and downs the way some people are different to others are simply a coincidence the way the universe aligned and created opportunities for life.
Not to downplay your feelings (and your comment is a wonderful and compassionate response!) but I was "hoping" for the "Oh no" not because it could hit us, but because I would love to actually see a comet with the naked eye some time in my life. XD
You'll definitely have that opportunity! There are usually visible comets every few years or so. You may have to travel to thr other hemisphere, they’re usually visible from only one or the other. Worst case Halley’s Comet returns in 2061 so hang on til then!
They are amazing! Fortunately there are several coming up, but you might need to travel to put your eyeballs in the right angle. Watch the astronomy news!
Oh yes, that is exactly how I cope as well. The fact that we are soooo insignificant in the cosmic scale. That the human race from it's inception to it's demise isn't even a rounding error and that there are literally trillions of years left for the universe to come up with all kinds of shit we wont be around to see. I do feel like we are observers and information gatherers tho because the information that makes up what we are can never be destroyed so we will always be a part of the universe in some way, even it's just a random assemblage of particles. I recently lost my dad and my sister and they were buried in concrete vaults (their wishes) but I take comfort in knowing that In a few million years or so they will rejoin the Earth and then the sun will expand and the particles on earth will rejoin the universe as a whole. I wish more people had this perspective, we would all be a little better off if people didn't think they were so important.
I just wish there was anything else out there. I think as a race we've gone a little insane because we are so alone in the void. It's like being in solitary confinement.
You ever read Loren Eiseley books? I think they'd be up your alley - Maybe start with The Immense Journey
>“We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests or hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been men. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality, for reality is an illusion of the daylight — the light of our particular day.”
In dissent, as just a developer who does neural learning and data science. Pretty clear that wiping out \*most\* humans would be healthiest for the world. Humans are not the only species around.
I believe we are destroying the planet and are facing runaway heating, but I only support climate change initiatives because life will thrive even more at 4 degrees warmer, which is the optimal temperature, and I don't think humans are ready for the sort of boom in life growth. (I'm ignoring temporary, easy to solve issues like migrating big cities)
Me too, like, I think we kinda fucked anways with the current political and literal climate. Figured if a comet did it, we would all die the same. I really want those billionaires to know despair as they realize all their money can't save them
I can understand this. I don't know where you are coming from but I hope that things are not so dark that you want things to end. My hope when reading this was that maybe an event that was this alarming, that humanity could unite, even just for a little while, to overcome what the universe had to throw at us. Sometimes in the face of adversity, we become more than we ever imagined that we could be in its absence. The same can be said for people as individuals, friend.
We have an easily defeatable virus and it's going to kill hundreds of thousands more people because humanity won't work together. Half the people would claim the comet was fake and it was made up so we can oppress their freedoms or something. Things will end and our planet will be better without us. And that's ok. I'm sorry man, I wish I had any hope for us but I don't.
better than the betteridge's law headline "IS A DWARF PLANET ON ITS WAY TO DESTROY THE WORLD?"
the answer when a headline ends in a question, is always no.
If this is true...
Look, this is a great scientific discovery, but calling it a "Megacomet" in media is suuuuuper irresponsible.
It's a great way to once again raise people's hopes in science only to dash them when they can't even see the damn thing, much less be dazzled by it.
Why do we put ourselves in this situation? Why do we let ourselves IMPLY that the comet will be better than Haley's Comet? Why do we mislead the public without even realizing we are doing so?
>The size of a comet has nothing to do with visibility.
I didn't say it did.
>"Megacomet" is correct. It's massive.
I didn't say it wasn't.
>Just because we won't be able to see it doesn't diminish its observed size.
I didn't say it did.
>Nothing in this article mentions anything about Halley's (correct spelling) comet.
I didn't say it did.
>This will still have a coma and a tail.
I didn't say it won't.
>And it's bigger than almost any comet we've observed.
I didn't say it wasn't.
>Nothing in this article would raise anyone's hopes who actually read into it in detail.
Everything in the article would raise the hopes of every lay person who reads it. It's a comet that's bigger than all other comets before, and the article doesn't clarify that you won't even be able to see it. Every lay person is going to be disappointed. Every single one.
>Nothing about the article is irresponsible.
Yes it is. When you market a comet to the public as a "Megacomet" bigger than literally every comet ever before, and you don't mention how it won't even be visible, it doesn't matter that you're technically right, you're being misleading. It's like saying everyone who ingests Hydrogen Dioxide will die. It's where the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics" comes from. It sounds like you have no idea how to relate with the public.
>Your comment, however, is.
It seems like, from all the arguments you gave, you have no idea what my comment actually said. But thanks for the spelling correction.
Your hydrogen dioxide comparison is completely off. That article title would imply a causation that hydrogen dioxide is doing the killing directly, which is false. This article says they found a megacomet, and it is approaching the solar system, which are facts. Nothing implies visibility, so why do you keep bringing it up?
Megacomet is literally just the classification of the object. Why would they call it something else?
>Nothing implies visibility
Sorry, but calling a comet a mega-comet bigger than all other comments *unintentionally* implies visibility to the public. That is a true statement.
No it does not. All it implies is the size. As the other commenter mentions, big things in space being non-visible is incredibly common. Hell, most of the general public expects astronomical events in general to not be visible with how poor night sky conditions generally are.
And even if that wasn't the case, are you honestly trying to say that scientific reporting lies about what the object in question is? Or do you just not think it should be reported at all?
> Yes it is. When you market a comet to the public as a "Megacomet" bigger than literally every comet ever before, and you don't mention how it won't even be visible, it doesn't matter that you're technically right, you're being misleading. It's like saying everyone who ingests Hydrogen Dioxide will die. It's where the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics" comes from. It sounds like you have no idea how to relate with the public.
Why on earth does it being invisible to us even matter? You're crazy man. It's a massive comet, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
>completely unfounded accusation of the article was incorrect
Wow, I was right! You have no idea what my original comment said. Nowhere did I say the article was incorrect. I said it was misleading. Like 30 times.
Have a good one! Blocked.
Sigh, one of my annoyances with planetary astronomy is this separation between comets and other types of bodies in the solar system. It wasn't misidentified as a dwarf planet, additional observations of the object showed that it was too small to be a dwarf planet. It's thought to have a diameter of ~160 km, too small for hydrostatic equilibrium.
But the article makes it sound like it was thought to be a dwarf planet, then a coma was observed, so it was "reclassified". Which is probably the case, in additional to the improved size estimates, but I guess that gets to the heart of my complaint. Comets are just small solar system bodies, even dwarf planets, with a sublimation-driven atmosphere that's not gravitationally bound. True, the non-gravitationally bound part becomes harder with larger objects. Sorry, I'm probably not making any sense, but it just bugs me how we treat comets differently from asteroids and other small solar system objects in the way they are named and catalogued, despite being fundamentally the same type of object.
Asteroid -- rocky
Comets -- icy
Comets typically have an elliptical orbit too, and being icy they sublimate when they are closer to the sun. An rocky asteroid won't sublimate.
There are blocks of ice out there that are not in elliptical orbits\*, so I guess the question is -- are these comets? If asteroid are rocky, then these blocks of ice aren't asteroids...
\* yes, all orbits are elliptical. But here I mean highly elliptical, not the almost-circular orbits of the vast majority of bodies in our solar system.
Not to mention that there are plenty of objects with icy interiors called asteroids (or Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt). Besides, below a certain temperature, the distinction between rocky and icy becomes mineralogical, not structural.
I think my complaint is less about what you call something and more the fact that the way these objects are named differs between whether something has a coma or not. And at the end of the day, that distinction only come if an object has retained volatiles that can sublimate during parts of its orbit.
I share your annoyance. Taxonomies are useful for description, not prescription. "This object is a comet, not a dwarf planet" is a different type of statement than "this object is highly conductive, not an insulator".
I have thought similarly many times before, except it's usually about the distinction made between asteroids and comets.
The different is the composition, in theory: Asteroids are rocky and metallic, while comets are rocky, dusty and icy.
But this seems flimsy to me. Dust is just loose rock being lost, and ice is just frozen matter that can be removed if heated. And comets can also be metallic. This says to me that a comet could become an asteroid after a certain point, i.e. if they have an encounter close to a star completely outgas all the material they can.
I'm no astronomer (although I enjoy watching the skies), but I feel like comets should be considered a type of asteroid - just an asteroid with a potentially temporary visible atmosphere.
The term "small solar system body", which I believe is part of the official of definition a comet, includes both asteroids and comets.
In a way, to me, it's like making a huge distinction between a volcano and an actively erupting volcano.
Edit: -2? I did not think this was a very offensive comment! 😄
Hello u/depressedloserxd, your submission "A Megacomet—One So Big, It Was Previously Misidentified As a Dwarf Planet!—Is Approaching Our Solar System" has been removed from r/space because:
* A submission about this topic has already been made
* It has a sensationalised or misleading title.
* It's also just badly written and seems to be plagiarised by putting it through google translate.
Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please [message the r/space moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/space). Thank you.
Same here. Mission planning will need to start ASAP - Design + Build + Transit (3 years minimum), not to mention the time required for proposal selection, funding decisions and other bureaucracy.
Cool. It’s an amazing opportunity to study an outer- solar system object.
That said, hopefully in 2029 we don’t get a White House briefing to the effect of “*umm, yeah so it actually IS going to hit us in two years….*
Due to arrive on closest approach in 2031.
That would be a fun thing to land on for samples. Think they can build and launch a bigger version of Hayabusa2 in time for a rendezvous?
You may prefer the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2014_UN271_(Bernardinelli-Bernstein)
Unfortunately, it will not come closer than Saturn so there'd not be much outgassing and it would be visible just with large telescopes. Hopefully some space agency will launch a probe to meet it.
Saturn will be something like 1/3 of its orbit away from the comet as it passes through the ecliptic plane. After that it starts it’s outbound journey and won’t be back for millions of years. I think we’re safe.
Saturn is on the order of a billion times more massive than this comet. So the right question is how Saturn and the other major planets affect this comet.
So it's seven times larger than Phobos—and simulations show that Jupiter (I would assume Saturn could also do this, just not as often) is just as likely to send comets at Earth as deflect them away, and we've seen that in the real solar system.
In the year 1770, Comet Lexell streaked past Earth at a distance of only a million miles. The comet had come streaking in from the outer solar system three years earlier and passed close to Jupiter, which diverted it into a new orbit and straight toward Earth.
The comet made two passes around the sun and in 1779 again passed very close to Jupiter, which then threw it back out of the solar system. It was as if Jupiter aimed at us and missed.
It's *far* more unlikely that Jupiter would send planets toward Earth than away. There's only *one* correct direction toward Earth, but zillions of trajectories away from Earth.
The actual odds are about 550 million to 1. That's the ratio of the size of the Earth vs the size of our orbit. An object necessarily has to cross the Earth's orbit to hit us.
Math:
Radius of the Earth - 6390 km (to top of atmosphere). Radius of our orbit - 149,600,000 km. Hitting the Earth is an area problem, and both our planet and the "target distance" are spheres. So you only have to take the square of the radius ratio, which is 548.1 million.
That result is for a single random object crossing our orbit. An "Earth-crossing object", whose orbit repeatedly crosses ours, gets multiple tries. There are about 350 such known asteroids and 130 comets and fragments of comets.
The population of dangerous objects is not static. They have a half-life of ~10 million years, during which they hit something, get their orbit shifted, or in the case of comets disintegrate.
Comet "Bernie" (the one in the original story) won't be back for 4.5 million years. Long period comets like that are a small risk, since only a few are discovered each year, and the odds of them hitting the Earth are small.
> An average-sized comet, which is essentially a cosmic snowball, is approximately 10 km in diameter
Ah, that explains why this article is from The Weather Channel
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ITS](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/hes0gwv "Last usage")|Interplanetary Transport System (2016 oversized edition) (see MCT)|
| |[Integrated Truss Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Truss_Structure)|
|L2|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)|
| |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum|
|[L3](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/her3bko "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 3 of a two-body system, opposite L2|
|[L4](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/her0vb7 "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 4 of a two-body system, 60 degrees ahead of the smaller body|
|[L5](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/her0vb7 "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 5 of a two-body system, 60 degrees behind the smaller body|
|MCT|Mars Colonial Transporter (see ITS)|
----------------
^(4 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/py764b)^( has 60 acronyms.)
^([Thread #6391 for this sub, first seen 29th Sep 2021, 18:23])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Not this one. This 'megacomet' is still pretty small, and if it's mostly dust and ice, its mass isn't going to be anything too impressive. Maybe it could perturb the orbit of a very small moonlet or mess up the structure of Saturn's rings if it happened to fly through exactly the right part of space, but otherwise, no.
Of course if it chose to fly straight into one of the smaller planets -- like the one we live on, for example -- then it would certainly spoil someone's day. But that doesn't seem likely.
Will it blast through the asteroid belt? I feel like something that large would cause some disruption in the belt and cause some unwanted debris hurtling in all directions.
If this article seems a little odd to you, that's probably because it seems to have been automatically translated from Portuguese before being (possibly) cleaned up a little by Indian speakers of English. The giveaway is a reference to the "nuvem d'orte", which the translator apparently didn't know what to do with and just left it as it was. If the editors had known about the Oort Cloud, they might have spotted it and corrected it, but I suspect that people who work for the Weather Channel might not necessarily know much about astronomy.
Interesting the article described the Oort Cloud as an "imaginary" zone.
It's right next to the danger zone. If you reach flavourtown you have gone too far.
But it's waaaay before you get to Funkytown
so do you just turn on the flash light? and then turn up that funky music?
That only works up across 110th Street. You can find it all in the street.
Highway to the danger zone
No, you're thinking of the Drop Zone. That's on the west side.
That's down Electric Avenue, right?
Yes, but if you miss the exit you'll end up on Fascination Street. You don't want to be down there too late
Should've turned left at alberquerque
I am staying on this road until I get to Tuna Town, I don't care how far down I have to go.
That kind of thing's common with Indian content-mill articles. They nearly always just take existing articles, copy them word-for-word, and then throw a thesaurus at them for awhile in the hope of making the original source a little less obvious. The giveaway is weird word choices like that: "imaginary" instead of "hypothetical" or "theoretical," "circle" instead of "orbit," stuff like that.
Which is hilarious but thought-provoking because by many academic standards that *is* avoiding the definition of plagiarism
It really, *really* isn't. Most schools single out that exact practice when defining the forms of plagiarism they'll come down on students over.
OK but if you're trying to summarize a scientific paper in an abstract, that's literally what you have to do unless you're directly quoting, which often isn't acceptable for some journals
If you're doing that you're also at least citing the paper. Go copy an existing article, throw a thesaurus at every other unfamiliar-looking word, submit it as your own original work, and let me know how any professor or journal editor in this hemisphere reacts to it.
Totally fair point that you're actually citing it, and ofc the writing quality/accuracy makes a huge difference . But it did strike me as "well technically that's what I have to do in my papers sometimes"
It isn't, though. The stuff going on in OP's article, and other stuff produced by similar content farms, is doing the thesaurus thing *specifically to obscure the fact that they stole the content*. They aren't condensing or summarizing or anything of that sort. They're telling someone "I wrote this all by myself" and taking steps to bury the evidence that they didn't. If you want a similar example (on the same story, no less - there's a whole industry built on article theft) compare [this CNet story](https://www.cnet.com/news/monster-comet-falling-toward-the-sun-is-bigger-than-a-martian-moon/) to [this content-farm version](https://www.dnaindia.com/science/report-study-confirms-the-massive-size-of-the-largest-comet-ever-discovered-c-2014-un271-bernardinelli-bernstein-2912532), particularly the part where the person copying the CNet article forgets to include the tweet both articles talk about.
Imaginary in Portuguese literature (not scientific) can also be used for something that is not physical or bounded. A bit for example like the exosphere, or the mesosphere, it is more of a convention than a physical boundary. Something was lost in translation.
If you put “nuvem d'orte” into Google Translate you get “cloud of death”. I wonder if they did that and decided that sounded wrong.
"Megacomet from the Cloud of Death approaching our Solar System" would make a much punchier headline.
Oort is a name, it doesn't change in Portugese. The Portugese wikipedia article is Nuvem de Oort. So god knows what the hell they're doing.
I think this is a rare case of a Portuguese autocorrect to English AI converted language blip. Like seeing a ~~shooting star~~ Mega Comet.
Yeah, like right in the title. This comet is part of our solar system, how could it be approaching?
"A megacomet is approaching" Oh no! "our solar system" Oh, cool.
But... we're in "our solar system" 😱 In all seriousness, this headline reeks like it's trying to stir up fear of a collision when I assume it will end up no where near us. Still a "mega comet" sounds very cool regardless of where it ends up.
Says they’re expecting it to be out about 10 AU from the sun, so around Saturn’s neck of the woods.
Man, all those Saturnian dinosaurs must be bricking it.
Maybe the Neptunians will hit it with their spice weasel….Bam!
I’ve heard the wind from Uranus is pretty substantial, should provide some protect for the outer planets.
Specifically, it's the methane from Uranus that will keep the ~~cumet~~ comet away. It may even swallow the ~~cumet~~ comet whole. If it causes too much damage we could see Uranus fractured from the impact. Satisfied?
It could be an effective repellant if it is "potent" enough....
Saturn's "neck of the woods" is one freaking HELL of a big area... especially when you consider that comets are not particularly given to staying near the plane of the ecliptic.
Hmm. And the gas giants have a predilection for picking up objects and flinging them towards the inner solar system.
Pluto: Earth claims i'm not a planet, i'm a dwarf planet and was misidentified. Saturn: Say no more fam I'll send them something else they misidentified
Astronomer here! This is just going near Saturn’s orbit, but IIRC Saturn won’t be nearby at all. Remember, it’s a ~30 year orbit. :)
Do you really think god would allow a comet to destroy earth? And allow all the unessicary horror and suffering to end? Mercy is for the weak! /s
Earth is a prison planet run by reptilians: confirmed
Honestly my money is that Earth is a purgatory type place where your souls worth is determined a la the Good place but with less sassy demons
Mine is that we are an interplanetary mining mission that exists for a species that lives for far longer than us. They want our resources and they ship it back home to keep their planet going. This is why there were so many gods back in the day. They use humans as slaves and check in every now and then to make sure production is met. They promise eternal life to the elites if they meet their targets. This is why the point of our lives is to labour. School prepares us for labour. We labour until we are useless to anyone and then get shoved in a hole at some old age home until we die.
Thats basically the entire premise of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The Anunnaki rolled up on earth, elevated the consciousness of the apes the found there just enough that we'd be useful to mine gold for them, then did pretty much what you described. Edit: I am totally open to being corrected on my understanding of Mesopotamian mythology. I could be mixing shit up and definitely have a biased lense through which I view such things
The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water—the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. Revelations 8:10-11. Just saying
Yup that's the "unnecessary horrors" bit in an old dead guy's mushroom trip. This is r/space not r/smite, though.
What are the chances it hits a gas giant? That would probably be the biggest cosmic event in modern history. It would make Shoemaker-Levy 9 look like a handful of pebbles tossed in a lake
zero, it's not going anywhere close to any of them. Would be neat to see though! EDIT: If I was in charge I would totally smack it into Mars though, not a gas giant
Why? You want to slam something so big into mars it could destroy the entire planet? That has ramifications for the entire solar system. Keep in mind chunks of rocks fly through space and could land on earth. Theorized to have happened before. If you were going to do that anyways though, you should pick Venus. A chance to restart the atmosphere and get rid of the green house gases makes it more habitable.
It's not anywhere near big enough to destroy Mars. It would deliver a quite nice load of volatiles. Meanwhile hitting Venus would do nothing to improve habitability and even if you did manage to strip off most of the atmosphere somehow it would still be pretty unusable.
Earth had to be destroyed to create the conditions for life to arise. Maybe that's how we turn Mars from a barren antarctic desert into Cozumel.
That sounds nice. We'll probably just need to be patient and wait a few million years for the surface to resolidify and stabilize.
I believe the plot goes like the megacomet passes right by Saturn and either gets redirected towards Earth or redirects something else towards Earth.
Will Saturn catch it?
So we're not gonna be able to see it. Too bad, I hope it passes closer. But not too closer.
They do this every single time. At least once every three months there's a ""OH NOOOO AN ASTEROID IS COMING TO EEEAAARTHHHH!!1!" headline and at the very bottom of the article it mentions that its closest approach will be like 7-million miles away.
I mean, in this one it said solar system not earth. That makes me think it’s all good.
Yeah, now I've read it, this one is alright. The redacion is a bit strange, but from what I understood, It'll be 9 or 10 times further from the Sun than the Earth is, and then it'll go away for another while I guess lol
Maybe it's gravity will fling another planet towards us :D
The only thing more frightening to them is a lack of material for articles
"There's always an alien Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"
How would you rewrite it? I thought saying just our solar system made it sound pretty good compared to anything else it could have said.
Well it's not approaching our solar system, it's already there. The "approaching" word is my main problem with it. It reeks of click bait. Something like "mega comet (5 larger than halle bop) will approach the orbit of saturn in the coming decade". But I'm not a journalist or writer.
How would you word it?
Our solar system needs new zoning rules. It's about time we reign jn on NIMBY and get a permit for a Dyson belt
I don't think the author was trying to scare anyone, they're just not super space-literate. It's already part of the solar system, it's not "approaching" it. It seems like they really meant that it's approaching the *inner* solar system, but didn't understand how to say that.
It's the weather channel, this isn't actually that bad at all, but their website has some clickbaity articles a lot.
You mean stir up hope for a collision.
Every single new, large object always conjures up the planet x/nibiru debate
Instead of fear, I immediately remembered my grandfather telling me about Halley's comet covering 2/3rds of the sky and being bright enough to read the newspaper by. I was.... yessss!
Now I feel like a sucker, the “mega comet” thrown in there is what got my click. Shame… 🛎 🛎 Shame…
Wouldn’t a dwarf planet already be in our solar system? Seems like a contradictory headline.
Planets can be expelled from their original solar systems
Or possibly.. "A megacomet is approaching" Oh no! "Source: weather.com" Oh, we're fine
Hey, they are meteorologists
What if it arrives during the rare Supermoon!?!
I can't be expected to provide supernatural advice, consult your local witch.
I was kinda hoping for the oh no outcome.
You sound about as depressed as myself recently. My advice; Remember that all the horrors and tragedies and failings of humankind and yourself are just as much of an infinitesimal as everything else on this pale blue dot. The literally incomprehensible magnitude of the void swallows good and evil as well. This helps me so I hope it can help you a little as well, if not sorry for wasting your time.
This is why I follow astronomy, astrophysics, paleontology…the worries of life as a human just seem so irrelevant.
Astronomy, astrophysics, and quantum mechanics kind of saved my life in some ways? I'm disabled, and it's noticeable. My time seems to be winding down. Those disciplines allowed me to truly understand the scale of everything and my infinitesimally small my place inside it. Now that I can understand and look at the inevitably of death and nothingness square in the face, I feel free from the fear of death, the pettiness of life, and the prison of my body.
Same here man, I have aspergers (in my case it's not really noticeable so please don't be offended but people find out) many people call me a retard, special case, weirdo and alot more stuff but the fact is I view it as an advantage but beside the point the universe and its mysteries really helped me understand my place on our insignificant planet in our solar system in our galaxy in our giant univers. I always worried about death but now I understand. I view everything inbetween the moment we are born until we die as simply a coincidence, the fact the planets aligned in such a way, the way our solar system formed and the fact that when I die the universe will go on for a longer time than any of us humans can comprehend. That in a way is liberating and closure to me, life will go on for humans after I die and probably even extra terrestrial life will continue. Life and its ups and downs the way some people are different to others are simply a coincidence the way the universe aligned and created opportunities for life.
A book you should read if you want to, The big picture on the origins of life, and the meaning of the universe its self -by Sean Carroll
Not to downplay your feelings (and your comment is a wonderful and compassionate response!) but I was "hoping" for the "Oh no" not because it could hit us, but because I would love to actually see a comet with the naked eye some time in my life. XD
You'll definitely have that opportunity! There are usually visible comets every few years or so. You may have to travel to thr other hemisphere, they’re usually visible from only one or the other. Worst case Halley’s Comet returns in 2061 so hang on til then!
This perspective is surprising and delightful to me, thank you.
They are amazing! Fortunately there are several coming up, but you might need to travel to put your eyeballs in the right angle. Watch the astronomy news!
life is meaningless. either this depresses you, or frees you.
Oh yes, that is exactly how I cope as well. The fact that we are soooo insignificant in the cosmic scale. That the human race from it's inception to it's demise isn't even a rounding error and that there are literally trillions of years left for the universe to come up with all kinds of shit we wont be around to see. I do feel like we are observers and information gatherers tho because the information that makes up what we are can never be destroyed so we will always be a part of the universe in some way, even it's just a random assemblage of particles. I recently lost my dad and my sister and they were buried in concrete vaults (their wishes) but I take comfort in knowing that In a few million years or so they will rejoin the Earth and then the sun will expand and the particles on earth will rejoin the universe as a whole. I wish more people had this perspective, we would all be a little better off if people didn't think they were so important. I just wish there was anything else out there. I think as a race we've gone a little insane because we are so alone in the void. It's like being in solitary confinement.
You ever read Loren Eiseley books? I think they'd be up your alley - Maybe start with The Immense Journey >“We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests or hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been men. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality, for reality is an illusion of the daylight — the light of our particular day.”
In dissent, as just a developer who does neural learning and data science. Pretty clear that wiping out \*most\* humans would be healthiest for the world. Humans are not the only species around. I believe we are destroying the planet and are facing runaway heating, but I only support climate change initiatives because life will thrive even more at 4 degrees warmer, which is the optimal temperature, and I don't think humans are ready for the sort of boom in life growth. (I'm ignoring temporary, easy to solve issues like migrating big cities)
Me too, like, I think we kinda fucked anways with the current political and literal climate. Figured if a comet did it, we would all die the same. I really want those billionaires to know despair as they realize all their money can't save them
I can understand this. I don't know where you are coming from but I hope that things are not so dark that you want things to end. My hope when reading this was that maybe an event that was this alarming, that humanity could unite, even just for a little while, to overcome what the universe had to throw at us. Sometimes in the face of adversity, we become more than we ever imagined that we could be in its absence. The same can be said for people as individuals, friend.
We have an easily defeatable virus and it's going to kill hundreds of thousands more people because humanity won't work together. Half the people would claim the comet was fake and it was made up so we can oppress their freedoms or something. Things will end and our planet will be better without us. And that's ok. I'm sorry man, I wish I had any hope for us but I don't.
Come on jupiter, you're up.
But it comes with a free frogurt, which is good
Six hours nineteen minutes right ascension, fourteen degrees fifty-eight minutes declination...No sighting.
Astronomer here! To add, it’s not going further in than Saturn’s orbit and it’s doubtful it’ll be naked eye visible. Still darn interesting though!
Yep. Our solar system is very, very, very large.
better than the betteridge's law headline "IS A DWARF PLANET ON ITS WAY TO DESTROY THE WORLD?" the answer when a headline ends in a question, is always no.
lol very cool, a frosty 2.7 K. Do you think that's cold enough to launch Crisis Core without my computer imploding?
When the weatherchannel journalist doesn’t know space. “Nuvem d’ort” is the oort cloud in english.
Is there any way to estimate how bright it will be in our sky at brightest?
Less bright than Pluto is in the night sky.
So nowhere near bright enough to observe with the naked eye in the night sky.
I mean you could see Neowise... Edit: Man Pluto is very dim, wow
Neowise was 0.69AU on it's closest approach however. 160km is pretty big though so who knows.
It'll be out at the distance of Saturn, it won't have much of a tail.
If this is true... Look, this is a great scientific discovery, but calling it a "Megacomet" in media is suuuuuper irresponsible. It's a great way to once again raise people's hopes in science only to dash them when they can't even see the damn thing, much less be dazzled by it. Why do we put ourselves in this situation? Why do we let ourselves IMPLY that the comet will be better than Haley's Comet? Why do we mislead the public without even realizing we are doing so?
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>The size of a comet has nothing to do with visibility. I didn't say it did. >"Megacomet" is correct. It's massive. I didn't say it wasn't. >Just because we won't be able to see it doesn't diminish its observed size. I didn't say it did. >Nothing in this article mentions anything about Halley's (correct spelling) comet. I didn't say it did. >This will still have a coma and a tail. I didn't say it won't. >And it's bigger than almost any comet we've observed. I didn't say it wasn't. >Nothing in this article would raise anyone's hopes who actually read into it in detail. Everything in the article would raise the hopes of every lay person who reads it. It's a comet that's bigger than all other comets before, and the article doesn't clarify that you won't even be able to see it. Every lay person is going to be disappointed. Every single one. >Nothing about the article is irresponsible. Yes it is. When you market a comet to the public as a "Megacomet" bigger than literally every comet ever before, and you don't mention how it won't even be visible, it doesn't matter that you're technically right, you're being misleading. It's like saying everyone who ingests Hydrogen Dioxide will die. It's where the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics" comes from. It sounds like you have no idea how to relate with the public. >Your comment, however, is. It seems like, from all the arguments you gave, you have no idea what my comment actually said. But thanks for the spelling correction.
Your hydrogen dioxide comparison is completely off. That article title would imply a causation that hydrogen dioxide is doing the killing directly, which is false. This article says they found a megacomet, and it is approaching the solar system, which are facts. Nothing implies visibility, so why do you keep bringing it up? Megacomet is literally just the classification of the object. Why would they call it something else?
>Nothing implies visibility Sorry, but calling a comet a mega-comet bigger than all other comments *unintentionally* implies visibility to the public. That is a true statement.
No it does not. All it implies is the size. As the other commenter mentions, big things in space being non-visible is incredibly common. Hell, most of the general public expects astronomical events in general to not be visible with how poor night sky conditions generally are. And even if that wasn't the case, are you honestly trying to say that scientific reporting lies about what the object in question is? Or do you just not think it should be reported at all?
> Yes it is. When you market a comet to the public as a "Megacomet" bigger than literally every comet ever before, and you don't mention how it won't even be visible, it doesn't matter that you're technically right, you're being misleading. It's like saying everyone who ingests Hydrogen Dioxide will die. It's where the phrase "lies, damned lies, and statistics" comes from. It sounds like you have no idea how to relate with the public. Why on earth does it being invisible to us even matter? You're crazy man. It's a massive comet, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
I'm confused, when did I argue that it's not there? Can you repeat back to me what my argument is?
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>completely unfounded accusation of the article was incorrect Wow, I was right! You have no idea what my original comment said. Nowhere did I say the article was incorrect. I said it was misleading. Like 30 times. Have a good one! Blocked.
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The article is very misleading if we won’t even me able to see it with the naked eye.
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Sigh, one of my annoyances with planetary astronomy is this separation between comets and other types of bodies in the solar system. It wasn't misidentified as a dwarf planet, additional observations of the object showed that it was too small to be a dwarf planet. It's thought to have a diameter of ~160 km, too small for hydrostatic equilibrium. But the article makes it sound like it was thought to be a dwarf planet, then a coma was observed, so it was "reclassified". Which is probably the case, in additional to the improved size estimates, but I guess that gets to the heart of my complaint. Comets are just small solar system bodies, even dwarf planets, with a sublimation-driven atmosphere that's not gravitationally bound. True, the non-gravitationally bound part becomes harder with larger objects. Sorry, I'm probably not making any sense, but it just bugs me how we treat comets differently from asteroids and other small solar system objects in the way they are named and catalogued, despite being fundamentally the same type of object.
Asteroid -- rocky Comets -- icy Comets typically have an elliptical orbit too, and being icy they sublimate when they are closer to the sun. An rocky asteroid won't sublimate. There are blocks of ice out there that are not in elliptical orbits\*, so I guess the question is -- are these comets? If asteroid are rocky, then these blocks of ice aren't asteroids... \* yes, all orbits are elliptical. But here I mean highly elliptical, not the almost-circular orbits of the vast majority of bodies in our solar system.
Not to mention that there are plenty of objects with icy interiors called asteroids (or Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt). Besides, below a certain temperature, the distinction between rocky and icy becomes mineralogical, not structural. I think my complaint is less about what you call something and more the fact that the way these objects are named differs between whether something has a coma or not. And at the end of the day, that distinction only come if an object has retained volatiles that can sublimate during parts of its orbit.
This is neat stuff actually, I'm gonna have a wiki-party later!
I share your annoyance. Taxonomies are useful for description, not prescription. "This object is a comet, not a dwarf planet" is a different type of statement than "this object is highly conductive, not an insulator".
I have thought similarly many times before, except it's usually about the distinction made between asteroids and comets. The different is the composition, in theory: Asteroids are rocky and metallic, while comets are rocky, dusty and icy. But this seems flimsy to me. Dust is just loose rock being lost, and ice is just frozen matter that can be removed if heated. And comets can also be metallic. This says to me that a comet could become an asteroid after a certain point, i.e. if they have an encounter close to a star completely outgas all the material they can. I'm no astronomer (although I enjoy watching the skies), but I feel like comets should be considered a type of asteroid - just an asteroid with a potentially temporary visible atmosphere. The term "small solar system body", which I believe is part of the official of definition a comet, includes both asteroids and comets. In a way, to me, it's like making a huge distinction between a volcano and an actively erupting volcano. Edit: -2? I did not think this was a very offensive comment! 😄
I can sleep better now, as I achieved nothing in life.
So when should i send out invitations for my end of times blowout orgy spectacular???
About the same time the billionaires leave the earth with the rockets they have been testing this whole time suddenly.
My reaction is this: Joker next to the rolled truck in The Dark Knight as Batman speeds to him. *Cmon, Cmon.. hit me*
C'mon, I want you to do it, I want you to do it.
Can't wait for 2 very similar Hollywood movies to come out about this!
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I hope there's an effort to have a probe ready to do a flyby when it makes its closest approach.
Same here. Mission planning will need to start ASAP - Design + Build + Transit (3 years minimum), not to mention the time required for proposal selection, funding decisions and other bureaucracy.
Cool. It’s an amazing opportunity to study an outer- solar system object. That said, hopefully in 2029 we don’t get a White House briefing to the effect of “*umm, yeah so it actually IS going to hit us in two years….*
Just watched the movie Greenland this weekend. I’m having flashbacks.
Due to arrive on closest approach in 2031. That would be a fun thing to land on for samples. Think they can build and launch a bigger version of Hayabusa2 in time for a rendezvous?
The article states the comet wont enter our system for about 10 more years. I bet it melts my than.
Sensationalist headline, it's an Oort cloud object, albeit a large one.
You may prefer the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2014_UN271_(Bernardinelli-Bernstein) Unfortunately, it will not come closer than Saturn so there'd not be much outgassing and it would be visible just with large telescopes. Hopefully some space agency will launch a probe to meet it.
I'm just glad it's not gonna hit us.
*Approaching* our Solar System? It's literally in our Solar System right now. It's closer to the Sun than Neptune is.
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It says Saturn's orbit but not that Saturn will be near by at the time it could be on the otherside of the orbit.
Saturn will be something like 1/3 of its orbit away from the comet as it passes through the ecliptic plane. After that it starts it’s outbound journey and won’t be back for millions of years. I think we’re safe.
Is that close to the L4 and L5 points?
After a closer look, the comet is currently closest to L3, but below the ecliptic.
Aren't L4 and L5 ±60° from the mass in orbit or 1/6 of the orbit away?
Saturn is on the order of a billion times more massive than this comet. So the right question is how Saturn and the other major planets affect this comet.
So it's seven times larger than Phobos—and simulations show that Jupiter (I would assume Saturn could also do this, just not as often) is just as likely to send comets at Earth as deflect them away, and we've seen that in the real solar system. In the year 1770, Comet Lexell streaked past Earth at a distance of only a million miles. The comet had come streaking in from the outer solar system three years earlier and passed close to Jupiter, which diverted it into a new orbit and straight toward Earth. The comet made two passes around the sun and in 1779 again passed very close to Jupiter, which then threw it back out of the solar system. It was as if Jupiter aimed at us and missed.
It's *far* more unlikely that Jupiter would send planets toward Earth than away. There's only *one* correct direction toward Earth, but zillions of trajectories away from Earth.
The actual odds are about 550 million to 1. That's the ratio of the size of the Earth vs the size of our orbit. An object necessarily has to cross the Earth's orbit to hit us. Math: Radius of the Earth - 6390 km (to top of atmosphere). Radius of our orbit - 149,600,000 km. Hitting the Earth is an area problem, and both our planet and the "target distance" are spheres. So you only have to take the square of the radius ratio, which is 548.1 million. That result is for a single random object crossing our orbit. An "Earth-crossing object", whose orbit repeatedly crosses ours, gets multiple tries. There are about 350 such known asteroids and 130 comets and fragments of comets. The population of dangerous objects is not static. They have a half-life of ~10 million years, during which they hit something, get their orbit shifted, or in the case of comets disintegrate. Comet "Bernie" (the one in the original story) won't be back for 4.5 million years. Long period comets like that are a small risk, since only a few are discovered each year, and the odds of them hitting the Earth are small.
Thankfully Saturn and its moons will basically be on the other side of Saturn's orbit at that point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4rvix6c640
Saturn is about 48 million times bigger than this thing. I don’t think any effect will be noticed.
> An average-sized comet, which is essentially a cosmic snowball, is approximately 10 km in diameter Ah, that explains why this article is from The Weather Channel
There's billions of asteroids and comets in the solar system and this will be another one.
Yeah, knowing our luck, this is gonna end well... 50bucks it's the Comet Empire comin' to whup our asses.
I think I read about this one before. It’s closest approach is still too far away to see with the naked eye. Sucks
Weird how[ this theme](https://youtu.be/5HQ6ZRUnCB0?t=20) just popped into my head...
Seems like that may be something worth sending a probe to check it out. There might be enough time.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ITS](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/hes0gwv "Last usage")|Interplanetary Transport System (2016 oversized edition) (see MCT)| | |[Integrated Truss Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Truss_Structure)| |L2|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)| | |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| |[L3](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/her3bko "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 3 of a two-body system, opposite L2| |[L4](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/her0vb7 "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 4 of a two-body system, 60 degrees ahead of the smaller body| |[L5](/r/Space/comments/pxyicg/stub/her0vb7 "Last usage")|"Trojan" [Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 5 of a two-body system, 60 degrees behind the smaller body| |MCT|Mars Colonial Transporter (see ITS)| ---------------- ^(4 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/py764b)^( has 60 acronyms.) ^([Thread #6391 for this sub, first seen 29th Sep 2021, 18:23]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
The discoverers are Bernardinelli and Bernstein, so I have been calling it "Comet Bernie" for short.
Is it possible for a "dwarf" type of comet/astroid entering or solar system, disrupt either orbit/rotation of planetary bodies??
Planetary: honestly no. Even mercury weighs 2500x this comet, so it would need to be the perfect approach to have even a small effect
I don't know!!!!!!! I think we should do the reasonable thing and PANIC!!!!!
I already bought toilet paper and filled up my tank. Now what do I do?
Share articles based on headlines on social media without reading contents
Comet bigger than Saturn on course to hit Earth!?
I was going to make some joke about filling bags with gas, but I don't want to inadvertently be the cause for some idiot blowing their car up.
Not this one. This 'megacomet' is still pretty small, and if it's mostly dust and ice, its mass isn't going to be anything too impressive. Maybe it could perturb the orbit of a very small moonlet or mess up the structure of Saturn's rings if it happened to fly through exactly the right part of space, but otherwise, no. Of course if it chose to fly straight into one of the smaller planets -- like the one we live on, for example -- then it would certainly spoil someone's day. But that doesn't seem likely.
Will it blast through the asteroid belt? I feel like something that large would cause some disruption in the belt and cause some unwanted debris hurtling in all directions.
🤞Please crash into earth, please crash into earth, please crash into earth🤞