Trajectory of the former comet Elenin. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The comet is gone, but not forgotten… yet.
Since its discovery last December, Comet Elenin appeared in a number of internet posts as a potential cause of future disasters on our planet. Now the two-kilometre comet has broken up into pieces of dust and ice.
According to Don Yeomans from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, new comets passing close by the sun break apart two percent of the time. “Comets are made up of ice, rock, dust and organic compounds and can be several miles in diameter, but they are fragile and loosely held together like dust balls,” he said.
“So it doesn’t take much to get a comet to disintegrate, and with comets, once they break up, there is no hope of reconciliation.”
The comet originally came from the outer solar system’s Oort Cloud and was detected when Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin observed sunlight reflecting off its surface. On its journey, Elenin passed within 72 million kilometres of the Sun, before it disintegrated.
The remaining fragments will follow a pattern set by other disintegrated comets. “They will trail along in a debris cloud that will follow a well-understood path out of the inner solar system. After that, we won’t see the scraps of comet Elenin around these parts for almost 12 millennia.”
Although the comet’s remnants didn’t get any closer to Earth than 35.4 million kilometres, it was still hailed by internet bloggers as a potential source of disasters. NASA’s responses to this were speculated to be attempts to hide the truth.
Yeomans said he cannot begin to guess why the small comet became such a sensation.”The scientific reality is this modest-sized icy dirtball’s influence upon our planet is so incredibly minuscule that my subcompact automobile exerts a greater gravitational influence on Earth than the comet ever would.
“That includes the date it came closest to Earth (Oct. 16), when the comet’s remnants got no closer than about 22 million miles (35.4 million kilometres).”
In order to make it clear that Elenin is no more, Yeoman has paid homage to a classic Monty Python sketch. “Comet Elenin has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-comet.”
Source: NASA
