Hi Rob
Your 1+1=2 doesn't convince me
BUT your Devil's Advocate much more...
I am glad I pursued on this, because NOW
I am getting a tangible answer
Thank you !
best regards to all
Michael B.
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Rob Matson" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 9:33 PM
To: "'Michael Bross'" <[email protected]>; "'Chris Peterson'"
<[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [meteorite-list] Russia mega meteor and asteroid
2012DA14related,yes I think so...
Hi Michael,
... I have learned to be more and more skeptical about the common/obvious
knowledge over the years... You might be right... but be careful about
your
high level of "certainty"...
The level of celestial mechanical certainty involved here is comparable to
the
uncertainty that 1+1 = 2. That said, I will play Devil's Advocate and
mention
that
there is one rather far-out scenario which is probably still dynamically
impossible,
but I mention it out of completeness. Imagine an object (that was once
part
of 2012 DA14) leading it by nearly a day on a slightly different
trajectory.
(Forget for the moment that days if not weeks before the 2012 DA14 flyby
it would have been detected by astronomers that were already tracking
the larger asteroid.) Suppose this unlikely object happens to make an
extremely grazing pass of the lunar farside such that its direction is
drastically
bent by ~90 degrees -- in precisely the right direction for a grazing
intercept
with Earth, say, 6 to 10 hours later. Such a 3-body solution is the ONLY
way to
bring about the situation you require, and yet I would argue that the
probability
of it happening by chance is much, much smaller than that of two smallish
asteroids making a close pass by earth within 24 hours of each other.
Really, though, the failure to telescopically detect the second object
ahead
of 2012 DA14 when it was being tracked by so many professionals and
citizen scientists throws a bit of cold water on the whole crazy scenario.
--Rob
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