
Hubble Observes First Confirmed Interstellar Comet - el_duderino
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-observes-1st-confirmed-interstellar-comet
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windsurfer
I hope we can get spectroscopy done on the tail! It would give us a really
unprecedented look into the material composition of other solar systems.

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crispyambulance
I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to launch a multitude of craft orbiting in
various places around the solar system and just stay primed and ready to
intercept and explore these surprise interstellar visitor objects? Is it
impractical to achieve this with something like a long-burning ion propulsion
system?

These things are really unique and it's not like we'll have any other way to
explore something up close from outside the solar system

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purple-again
Sadly you will be met with the same arguments that have been brought out since
before the time of the moon landing. Why? The money is better spent on
maintaining our military advantage over other counties. It’s better spent on
housing programs for the poor. It’s better spent on upgrading our crumbling
bridges and roads. It’s better spent on new infrastructure like trains and
nuclear plants.

The list will be endless and all of these people are right. Their world views
are no less correct than yours and their interpretation of how our shared
resources should be spent equally correct.

This is why capitalism is so effective. This is why Monarchies we’re so
effective. These systems exist to channel the theoretical 1,000,000 humans
away from spending all of their resources advancing 1,000,000 goals a single
unit and instead advance one goal a million units (monarchy) or 5 goals
200,000 units (capitalism).

Speaking more to the topic at hand, it’s great that we were able to make the
progress that we have and let’s be honest that’s owed almost entirely to the
moon race going public (same way gluten free everything is available now
making the people that really need it very happy because they never would have
received nearly as many units of productivity spent on advancing their problem
if it hadn’t gone mainstream for a time).

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muxator
Shouldn't "monarchy" be compared to "democracy" instead of "capitalism"?

The economic model pertains to a whole different plane, isn't it?

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purple-again
In this instance no not at all. I can compare the sun to a box of Cheerios
based on that fact that both are yellow and bringing the moon or Fruit Loops
into the conversation because you missed the context is “yellow things” is not
appropriate. Democracy has no place in what I am discussing.

Monarchy and capitalism are both drivers of aggregating individuals labor into
a small number of goals. Socialism and Democracy are both sources of driving
individual labor into individual pursuits.

Only the eye of the beholder can determine what is good or bad. A socialist
democracy is most likely incapable of putting a man on the moon. A
capitalistic monarchy is most likely capable of solving poverty within its
borders (be careful what you wish for as you may be determined to be part of
the cause of poverty and excised for the good oc The many).

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me_me_me
China is capitalistic monarchy and so far it doesn't look like they are
solving poverty.

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Santosh83
Since the observed composition of the comet is mentioned as being "remarkably"
similar to solar system comets isn't there _any_ possibility at all that it
could indeed be from within our system? Can no combination of freak
gravitational nudges/slingshots, however unlikely, result in the observed
orbit?

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piannucci
That’s a great question, and it’s (relatively) feasible to answer. The object
is coming in towards the center the solar system, so its past trajectory lies
outwards. If it has been disturbed into this path from a hypothetical sun-
centered orbit, it would have to have happened very recently: otherwise it
would be long gone, never to return. So it would be necessary for the back-
projected trajectory to pass very close to a compact, massive object. Dare I
say that the vast majority of all such massive objects in the solar system are
well known; so if the trajectory doesn’t indicate a close encounter with a
planet within the past decade or so, then this possibility is essentially
eliminated.

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jbattle
There was a recent paper that showed it is possible planet 9 is a primordial
black hole - would that work?

[https://phys.org/news/2019-09-planet-primodial-black-
hole.ht...](https://phys.org/news/2019-09-planet-primodial-black-hole.html)

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SiempreViernes
No, that paper says "What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole?" and then
works out some consequences and finds them to be not ruled out. It doesn't
_start_ from observations and arrive at the PBH in any natural way.

To judge for yourself hour serious the authors are in proposing a primordial
black hole to explain the anomalies in the outer asteroid belt, I refer you to
figure 1 in their paper:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11090.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11090.pdf)

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red75prime
Would you pass an opportunity to include illustration of an astronomical
object at a scale of 1:1?

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trentlott
I stared at that figure for about a minute and wondered at how friggin'
satisfied they have to have been about it.

It was and is really neat, even if the likelihood of its reality is low.

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muxator
> An artificial satellite also crosses the field of view

Can anyone give some hints on how to spot it? Maye it is really evident, but I
was not able to identify it.

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starborn
I am interested in the fact that an amateur astronomer discovered this and
have some subject matter questions. What type/size of telescope would be
required? Is this the result of simply arbitrarily scanning night skies? Do
amateurs use software of some sort to aide in locating sky locations where
undiscovered objects might be? When you do think you’ve found something how do
you report it? Do amateur astronomers gravitate toward any one social site,
i.e. is there a vibrant Twitter community or subreddit? Was/would Gennedy (and
amateurs like her) working in coordination with a group of others (local or
distributed).

TLDR I want to discover a space object. How do I do this?

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sjackso
You may want to check out the forum site Cloudy Nights.

Here's a thread in the amateur telescope subforum about the instrument that
discovered this comet. There's a photo of the telescope and of Borisov four
posts in to the thread.
[https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/677286-homemade-065m-f-15...](https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/677286-homemade-065m-f-15/)

That particular subforum is full of people who make their own telescopes in
their home shops, and it's a fascinating place to visit. From what I can tell,
this particular telescope is an extreme example, an instrument manufactured to
professional standards by a well-resourced optics professional working in his
spare time.

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caleb-allen
This is so cool!

I love seeing the influence of amateur astronomers, like in this case.

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rshnotsecure
This is quite serious. Interstellar objects travel at very fast speed. Comets,
because of their highly elliptical orbit, already impact earth at much higher
speeds than asteroids. Can only imagine what a hit from something further than
the Oort Cloud is.

It is very likely that the global flood monomyth is based on the impact of a
comet around 13,000 years ago. This was somewhat discounted only 10 years ago,
but now is more than the majority consensus in the field (“Younger Dryas
Impact Hypothesis”).

Comet would have hit Greenland by the way, with many pieces falling apart and
hitting North America. This would have destabilized the entire ice shield
across that area.

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tonmoy
How does a comet cause a global flood? I couldn’t find any hypothesis
regarding the link between comet impact and a global flood

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api
It would not create a true global flood but it would create tsunamis and
weather disruptions that could certainly by mythologized as such. Since humans
are egocentric we would naturally assume it was our fault and that we offended
the god(s).

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saberdancer
There is no difference between a comet and a asteroid in this kind of
situation, both would cause tsunamis.

On the other hand, having a huge fireball in the sky, earthquakes, ash falling
from the sky, would probably leave an impression along with the tsunami
(flood) that would be in the flood story. I seriously doubt the flood stories
came from an asteroid or comet impact. Much simpler explanation is that it is
a memory of either Black Sea forming or memory of the sea level rising at the
end of the ice age.

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dmix
This might be a dumb question but how does a comet reach 110,000mph? From an
explosion + slingshotting off gravity?

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stouset
It’s from interstellar space, and not from our solar system. Virtually all of
this speed is simply from it being in a different relative reference frame to
ours.

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wil421
Great but old video about frame of reference.[1]

Is the comet coming towards us or are we going towards it? Does a dropped ball
fall to the earth or are we going upwards to meet it?

[1] [https://youtu.be/lbnDSdrriGI](https://youtu.be/lbnDSdrriGI)

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sixothree
Does this mean we will only see one pass of this comet? Or did/will it get
captured?

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zentiggr
In this case, a hyperbolic trajectory means the orbit isn't closed, which also
means the the object's velocity is above escape velocity. The only thing that
would possibly change it to a capture scenario would be an extremely close
pass to a planet, which theoretically could drain off its excess velocity and
would then wind up in some sort of elliptical closed orbit.

Since an encounter like that is easy to predict once a trajectory has been
calculated, and there's no mention of it doing so, I have to assume it's going
to cruise in, pass its closest point to the Sun, and zoom right back out.

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sixothree
So that means this is incredibly historic, yes? We have only witnessed one
other interstellar object and we did not learn about it in time to make
meaningful observations?

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dreamcompiler
It's historic in the sense that it's one of the first interstellar objects
we've seen. But these things are almost certainly not rare; they only seem so
because we've only recently become able to detect them. In 10 years sightings
of interstellar objects won't even make the second-tier news feeds.

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sixothree
When my mother was born plate tectonics was a hypothesis. When I was born
proof of extra-solar planets did not exist.

I know this these objects have been hurling past us for billions of years, but
the fact that we spotted one is exciting for me.

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novalis78
While Oumuamua was a sentry buoy this ‘comet’ is a confirmation device
shielded as ‘interstellar comet’. I wonder who shows up next? This sectors
silicon based AI wiping out carbon life forms? Just kidding... hopefully we
get to see more of these interstellar objects in the next few years. Exciting!

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wpasc
Is this one less weird (interesting, unique, etc.) than Oumuamua?

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not2b
It is interesting in that it is only the second confirmed interstellar
visitor. It is less weird in that it looks like an ordinary comet, while the
first object is much more unusual.

