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Recipe: Crumbed Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3

It seems that being a comet can be a fairly crummy existence.


Remember Shoemaker-Levy getting ready to prang into Jupiter?

Evidently, making crumbs like this is kind of becoming habitual for these occasionally-luminous solar orbiters. Now... what do you imagine could be tearing these little stoney lumps so thoroughly apart at such extreme ranges?

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…
It seems that the combination of names means — pretty close to literally — “silent watchman” and of course one can make as much or little of that as one prefers.
11 May, 2006 09:31
Leon RJ Brooks said…
I also wonder why Deep Impact failed to shatter Tempel-1 when it hit with a delta of over 10km/second (DI dug further into the T1 silhouette each second than the longest edge of T1); I compare this to whatever stretched/crunched the Silent Watchman.
11 May, 2006 09:52
Leon RJ Brooks said…
An on-site-comment from BBC News which caused a chuckle:

The Deep Impact mission proves that if you throw enough money at something you are bound to hit it. [Walter, USA]
11 May, 2006 09:57
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