(meteorobs) Are Meteor Showers Misunderstood?

Mikhail Maslov ast0 at mail.ru
Fri Jun 17 14:05:19 EDT 2005


Hello,

Just like a joke, cncerning different variants of probe impact into 9P.
Besides an expected crater or the comet's breaking apart, the probe also
can break 9P through, make a hole in it and fly from the back side of
the comet, especially if its material is not such dense as expected,
or the probe impacts somethere near the edge of the comet body.
On the main article topic: The way of meteor dust formation through
comets disruption is known for very long time. It is less usual comparing to
melting and vaporation, but more productive. I don't quite understand
the phrase "it now appears that many meteoroid streams are caused by wholesale
disintegration of comets, which are loose assemblages of cometesimals
and are known to frequently break apart". The usual life of comets is
a number of perihelions and final desintegraion or gradual "cooling",
i.e. their turning into asteroids. In the second case the dust is completely
vaporation product, in the first case it is the mix of vaporation and
desintegration results. So we can't speak that meteor showers are
caused by desintegration, which only make the last material injection
into already existing streams, that begins to diffuse gradually
afterwards.
Of course, desintegration give much more material than usual
perihelion passage, so some strong historical meteor outbursts (noted
in the acticle) were or could be caused by desintegration clouds. But
we know many other cases (Drakonids, Leonids, J. Bootids) when usual
dust trails gave strong enhancements and storms. One way doesn't
disturb another one. I think, desintegration is distinguished too much
in the article, more than it deserves.

Best regards, Mikhail Maslov


GB> Interesting article. Does anyone have thoughts, ideas or criticism related
GB> to this article? I would love to read a discussion about this topic on 
GB> meteorobs!

GB> Regards,
GB> Geert




GB> At 23:02 16-6-2005, you wrote:
>>"Are Meteor Showers Misunderstood?" (SETI press release)
>>
>>This article discusses research by Peter Jenniskens and
>>Esko Lyytinen.  Here are two links to the same article:
>>
>>http://www.seti.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=362179&ct=1016671
>>
>>http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0506/15meteors/
>>
>>Ed Cannon - ecannon at mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA
>>
>>---
>>Mailing list meteorobs
>>meteorobs at meteorobs.org
>>http://lists.meteorobs.org/mailman/listinfo/meteorobs


GB> ---
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