Astroblog: For the last time, 73P will NOT hit the earth

Sunday, May 07, 2006

For the last time, 73P will NOT hit the earth

If you, like me, have recieved spam email from Eric Julien claiming that fragments of 73P will hit the Earth, ignore them, they are rubbish. The fact that they are based on a "psychic prediction" should be a dead giveaway. As I have noted before, the fragments of 73P won't come within millions of kilometers of us. The Bad Astronomer has more information on Eric Julien's nonsense.

Update: A NASA article about 73P failing to hit Earth is here.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 8:24 am

Comments:

May 25th is when the comet is heading into Bermuda. The force of the hit will and it's aftermath will travel north along the
whole eastern seaboard, with the waves from the ocean after the hit expected to be as high as 200 feet and traveling 5 miles inland.

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:54 am

No, it will not hit. There will be no tial wave. Heck, we won't even get a decent meteor shower out of this one. We cloud use it as an excuse to get rid of Bruce Willis though.

# posted by

Ian Musgrave : 7:03 am

I'm not too convinced by Julien's claims, particularly when he talks about his extraterrestial conversations, but if I lived in the East Coast, it would think that it might be a good time to visit friends upstate or play the slots in Las Vegas.

I don't think there will be a tidal wave either, even if there is a hit. The atlantic dorsal is a diverging fault, and the magma just drifts up leisurely to fill the holes formed by the diverging faults.

Anything falling into that, even with high momentum, will just act like pebble thrown with all your might into a bucket of syrup--all that viscous magma will absorb the kinetic energy.

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:57 pm