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Space Science

Do Comets go Poof? 40

Posted by timothy from the they-just-melt-away dept.
lwbecker2 writes "IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering Magazine has a free story online about scientists try to solve the mystery of where all the missing comets are going. Do they go Poof? Interesting information on the modelling and simulation of the Universe including the use of Mathematica and Beowulf clusters."
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Do Comets go Poof? More

Do Comets go Poof?

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  • Old comets never die (Score:5, Funny)

    by LastToKnow ( 449735 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @11:59PM (#5323622) Homepage
    They just get more and more eccentric!

  • Out of Sight, Out of Mind. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vodak ( 119225 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @12:04AM (#5323640)
    I know it is simplistic to think this way but, I'm glad we do not see that many comets on a regular basis. The less we see the less hit the earth, yes I know one day the Earth's luck will run out and my buried remains will be thrown all over space but to live in the ignorance of the moment makes me happy.
  • I have a Beowulf cluster of... COMETS!!!!!

    Does this mean that beowulf cluster comments will actually be ON TOPIC? ;)

    D.

  • I question the base model (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @01:37AM (#5323938) Homepage Journal
    Levison's team modeled its fictitious comets on a small cluster of Unix workstations.
    I didn't think that Unix workstations were anything like comets.

  • The Sun (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JM Apocalypse ( 630055 )
    Well -- you see ... the comments only can be seen when they are near the sun, and when they have a tail. They don't go poof. They just hide for a few hundred years. You know, the ice exposed to heat effect.
    • ...the comments only can be seen when they are near the sun...

      So that's how I see all those -1 score postings...

      -T

    • semi-true statement. Interstellar radiation can do a lot for exposing comets way off. Now all you need is a scope with a big enough aperture...
  • Somebody tell me, where are the missing comments?

    *chirp*
    *chirp*
  • Now it seems comets are coming out...

  • obvious? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ptaff ( 165113 )
    If comets have a tail, I guess they're losing mass. If I lose mass on a regular basis, I won't go *poof*: I'll just gradually disappear. Or I'll gently break up in pieces that will make the mass-loss even more evident.
    • If I lose mass on a regular basis, I won't go *poof*: I'll just gradually disappear. Or I'll gently break up in pieces that will make the mass-loss even more evident.

      Best argument I've seen for not going on a diet... ;)

      -T

  • It's "Solar System Warming" that is killing off all of the coments. This is where our Global warming is REALLY coming from! And all those silly scientists thought is was man-made materials doing it! Now we have the proof!
  • space dust (ice, rock, hydrogen binded together)
  • ...call my comet a poof? Oh wait, I thought you said pint...
  • Some theorists have speculated about mirror matter. This hypothetical stuff is exactly like ordinary matter but only interacts with ordinary matter gravitationally. They theorize [space.com] that comets disappear because they are a thin matrix of ordinary molecules gravitationally bound to a large mirror object (perhaps a mirror asteroid in the mirror universe). The sun drives off the ordinary stuff, but the mirror object goes unchecked. I'm not making it up!
  • I was looking at this comet and then it was like "Poof". And then, like, the comet was gone, and I was like, "huh?"

    It was a really good comet.

    It was kind of a bummer.
  • Quoting a webpage [nasa.gov] from NASA in 2001:
    Leonid meteor storms happen when Earth passes through clouds of dusty debris shed by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle when it comes close to the Sun every 33 years. This year our planet is heading for close encounters with four such clouds. They bubbled off Tempel-Tuttle in 1699, 1766, 1799 and 1866.

    The same article goes on to mention that, in 1998, we passed through a cloud shed by that comet in 1333. Unless Tempel-Tuttle is picking up new material when it is at the apogee of it's 33 year orbit, then we are witnessing a comet slowly go *poof* - the material is not vanishing into oblivion, though - it is being left behind as space pollution.

    The same goes for the Perseids (comet Swift-Tuttle), and every other meteor shower that the Earth plows through each year.

    It's too bad that the original article did not mention this - was the real-life data overlooked, or did the model take this into account, and it still shows that 99% of the expected comets are missing?

  • maybe there weren't as many comets... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ggwood ( 70369 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @09:46PM (#5331834) Homepage Journal
    I have lots of respect for the type of work Levison is doing. However, in order to start it you have to have pretty firm beliefs about the origin of the solar system (an event we did not see directly - nor have we seen other solar systems form; the process is slow so we won't.)

    What his work is really showing is that either: (a) one (or more) of his assumptions in his simulation is wrong or (b) there were not so many comets in the early solar system. I think this is why Levison says he is trying to prove his prior work wrong (e.g. he is looking for potential errors in his assumptions.)

    Here [agu.org] is a poster on early solar system abundance of small comets. In this example, they count craters on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, to get an indication of how many there were in the early solar system.

    An example of an simple statement which, although unlikely to be true, has to worry Levison in the back of his head somewhere, would be along the lines of: at some time in the past, our solar system passed through a debris field which created many of these craters, thus the large number of craters, but it only happened once (or very, very rarely) and this is throwing off our counting.

    Such projects can putter along for years but have the potential to return fabulous results. Its the kind of project graduate students are interested in, but worried they cannot get a solid thesis project out of. It is also tough to fund such projects in America these days. Thus I have respect for these people, and wish them good luck.
  • Praise $diety, the waiting is over! At last we have a real article about Beowolf clusters!! After all the fake "how about a cluster of those" comments in all the other articles, we finally have a genuine, informative article about clusters. And unlike those other projects that are searching for non-existent aliens, this project is doing real research -- searching for non-existent comets.

    Now I can die happy. Or at least log out happy.

  • howto (Score:2)

    by Parsec ( 1702 )
    find /milkyway/sol -iname *comet* -exec rm -rf {} \;

    "Where did all my comets go?" ... sorry, bad joke...
  • http://perso.club-internet.fr/vadeker/ipri/sl9_rum eur/SL-9e.htm

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