Nice thought, Gary, but as soon as any changes in orbital velocities became measurable we’d be able to narrow down where to look. If there was nothing immediately visible there then I think we’d rapidly come to the conclusion that the object was something like a neutron star or a black hole and start looking for occlusions and gravitational lensing effects.

Of course, what we could do about the interloper once we’d found it is a different matter…

Dark Star Crashing,,,sounds like fun.

Gary 7

…calculate 6 minutes…
…times 10 to get an hour…time 24 to get a day…time 365.2442 to get a year…times 53 to get an orbit…

…then those 6 minutes represent 1 / 4,645,906.224 of the comet’s orbit. So every 53 years, it has that chance to hit us, assuming completely random distribution.

Which is approximately 3 times the chance of any one ticket winning a 6/49 lottery.

Love it, a nice loooooonnngg post to preemptively refute the potentially forthcoming panic articles.

I always see that picture as the One Ring too.

Another possibility is that as a short period comet the parent body might also be an exhausted comet where the volatiles are nearly gone and thus not easily seen from Earth.

Remember that the debris that creates meteor showers tends to spread along its parent’s orbit, which is why we get the Perseids every year despite the orbit of its parent, Comet Swift-Tuttle, taking 133 years, so we aren’t limited to looking for a comet that last appeared around 1958.
?

Ken, to calculate the orbit, one only needs the position and velocity of the meteors at a specific time. [...] In the paper, the calculated orbits of all five rocks were pretty close, within certain error bars.

Thanks. I haven’t read the paper, but I guess that’s why they have those letters after their names. I’m just surprised that the margin of error isn’t like “we think it’s somewhere over in that general area… maybe” as they wave their arms around.

Every time I see that lowermost picture I see the One Ring To Rule Them all from Lord of the Rings somehow encountering our atmosphere

Funnily enough, I just watched the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring with my kids the other day. Of course, they all had to comment <sheldon>you mean this ring?</sheldon>

Uh…ahem. Am I the only one who…koff!…super secretly sorta kinda wants to see a comet smack into the earth? Just a little one…maybe. Sometime. Because, you know, it might be…um, kind of neat. In a “gosh, what would happen if I stuck my finger in that light socket” way.

Why not hit the “near” side of the Moon instead? (With enough lead time so that every telescope on that side of the Earth were to be watching?)

Sporkley:

So, how do we know that the meteor in question hasn’t already hit us? It seems like for all we know this could have been the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, and we’re just seeing the remnant debris trail from a long-gone interceptor.

Because we cross this comet’s path in February, and everyone knows that the one that wiped out the dinosaurs was in October.

Not necessarily. He might, as I was, be thinking of a certain jingle in a TV commercial that aired not so long ago — for an automobile called the Mercury Meteor.

I agree! In fact, best to withdraw all your savings and investments and place them somewhere secure. Might I suggest my wallet?

See you the week after next.