Rare Meteor Event to Inform on Dangerous Comets

David Shiga writes "September 1, 2007 may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a rare meteor shower called the alpha Aurigids, New Scientist reports. Unlike better-known displays like the Perseids that occur every year on the same date, the alpha Aurigids have only been spotted three times before, in 1935, 1986, and 1994. NASA's Peter Jenniskens predicts they will return again this year, only to disappear again for the next 50 years. Meteor showers are caused by debris shed from comets, and the rarity of the alpha Aurigids is due to the exceptionally infrequent passes of its parent comet through the inner solar system, just once every 2000 years. Studying the alpha Aurigids could help astronomers turn these rare showers into an advance warning system for long period comets with potentially dangerous orbits, which would be hard to spot ahead of a collision with Earth."

This week: Perseids

[Animaether]

Speaking of the Perseids.. might have mentioned that -those- are this week. Specifically, the 12th should be the high point, but from thursday through monday you may catch them. As luck (or stellar physics, I suppose) would have it - it'll be New Moon, so no moonlight interference.

200 meteors / hour

[Lord Satri]

From TA: "Based on past showers, there should be up to 200 bright meteors visible per hour, and they may have an unusual blue-green colour."

[that's the info I wanted from the article... perfect timing since we'll be canoing with friends at that date... now, if only the god of blow-away-clouds can be with us...]

Day of the Triffids?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"Based on past showers, there should be up to 200 bright meteors visible per hour, and they may have an unusual blue-green colour."

After which all who watched the pretty green meteors will be blind and the experimental carnivorous plants will eat them.

(Or at least that's how it went in _Day of the Triffids_ by Brian Aldiss.)

Re:One disaster for another

[GnuDiff]

You only need a 10km diameter ice (not even rock or iron) asteroid to wipe out humanity due to aftereffects alone, not to mention quake:

Energy Released: 10 million MT (MegaTons of TNT)
(Shoemaker Levy 9 collision with Jupiter: 5 million MT)

QUAKE!! Magnitude 10.3 (largest recorded Earthquake: 9.5)

Crater Diameter: 67.3 km
Crater Depth: 1.0 km

Ohh! Look at all the dust in Earth's atmosphere! It's going to block the sunlight and make it very very cold there for many years. There will be another wave of mass extinctions. You humans will not survive.

See http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/impact/ [umd.edu]

Re:Day of the Triffids?

[MythMoth]

You should read the book. As others have pointed out, it was Wyndham, not Aldiss. And the comets weren't comets. And, in fact, it's nothing like as stupid as it sounds. The background to the story is a bit dated, but otherwise it's quite striking. Another good read is the Kraken Wakes, which in the light of global warming could almost be a parable!