No, this is *not* a repeat of Shoemaker-Levy 9. Jupiter done got whopped upside the head when nobody was looking…
From the BBC:
The planet Jupiter shows evidence of having being hit by a large object, either a comet or asteroid.
A dark mark has appeared in its atmosphere towards the southern pole.
It was first seen by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on 19 July, and was then quickly followed up by others including the US space agency.
Nasa used its Infrared Telescope Facility on top of the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii to obtain detailed pictures of the disturbance.
From the JPL website:
Orton and his team of astronomers kicked into gear early in the morning and haven’t stopped tracking the planet. They are downloading data now and are working to get additional observing time on this and other telescopes.
This image was taken at 1.65 microns, a wavelength sensitive to sunlight reflected from high in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and it shows both the bright center of the scar (bottom left) and the debris to its northwest (upper left).
“It could be the impact of a comet, but we don’t know for sure yet,” said Orton. “It’s been a whirlwind of a day, and this on the anniversary of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Apollo anniversaries is amazing.”
Jupiter getting clobbered twice in 15 years might tend to lead a feller to think that the risk of impact might just be a little bit higher than previously expected. With, consequently, a greater need to have a program to mitigate such risks.
Additional images of the impact spot can be seen here: http://jupiter.samba.org/
PS: Any Brits in the Audience: what is this “Nasa” of which the Bbc speaks? Is it anything like the Raf or the Usaf? Surely they can’t mean NASA…
10 Responses to “Major impact event on Jupiter”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Well, Jupiter is much bigger than our little rock and it lives in a much more untamed section of the neighborhood. You expect drive-by shootings to happen more often in Detroit than Lincoln Nebraska. That said, big honking rock in an eccentric orbit and we didn’t know about it is in fact concerning.
Jupiter probably made some crack to Buzz Aldrin about faking the moon landing…
I believe Nasa is your equivalent of our Bnsc! 😉 Some of us spacehounds in the Uk say that that acronym stands for “British No-Space Centre”, but please excuse my cynicism!
Grif Ingram
I am surprised that this does not happen more often, Jupiter being the next orbit out from the Asteroid Belt, and a lot of eccentric orbit rocks in that region.
As for the possibility of Earth being struck, and what we can do about it, there just isn’t that much possibility of an impacting object this far in, and very damned little we can do about one anyway. Getting our lazy asses off this planet is the only real precaution humans can take. And we are 30 years behind the curve.
What better evidence could there be of a creator who wants us to think and act in our own best interests than that TWO impacts mark Apollo anniversaries? (“Yo! Humans! Pay attention! I REALLY mean it!”) I’m kidding of course, but it’s “interesting” the godheads haven’t picked up on these coincidences.
I cannot be certain of such things, but I’ve often thought that the ignoring of *scientific* coincidences by the religious is because they are scared of the implications. One of my favorite such coincidences was the Voyager Grand Tours… the ability of unpowered space probes to zip past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all in one shot was a very limited opportunity; it’ll be centuries (somewhere more than 5, IIRC) before that window opens again. And it just so happens that we developed the technology and systems required to make use of it *just* in time.
Why this would be “scary:” this would, if the fantasy holds true, be God (or gods) using mankinds scientific learning to send us messages. Not prophets or burning bushes or dreams or visions… *science.* If the religious extremists had to pay attention to scientists to get messages from God, their heads would asplode.
“asplode” alone makes your reply priceless. My personal take on godheads vs. science…which I’ve actually argued to a couple of ’em…is that being as how our brains are a gift from God[registered trademark], to deny evolution (i.e., the brain-gift-revealed evidence of the means of God’s handiwork) is blasphemy.
They either don’t understand my point, or back slowly away.
[…] A followup to THIS: […]
Who’s to say that God didn’t have a hand in evolution?
> Who’s to say that God didn’t have a hand in evolution?
The True Christians. Wander by any evolution thread over at Free Republic. If anyone has the temerity to point out that they believe in both evolution and God, the godbotherers will jump on him for being a heretic; someone who chooses to believe that Jesus was a liar.
Can’t win with some schmoes.