Message #10904

[davegrennan]

The asteroid theory has one BIG problem.  The area around Jupiter is notably devoid of asteroids because the 'big guy' has already swept them all up or ejected them to the langragian points as trojans. Don't forget that SL9 was broken on its first pass of Jupiter.  Given this there is no reason to beleive that if this indeed was a comet it was also broken on its first pass (which may or may not have also been its last).  The other piece of evidence supporting a soft body impact event is the secondary scarring which indicate substantial fallback.  A harder body would have punched much deeper and would have resulted in a more defined scar with far less secondary scarring.

Also it is almost certain that any asteroid with satellites which got this close to jupiter would have had to have made relatively close passes previously.  This would almost certainly result in the asteroid and any potential moons parting company at that stage (again tidal forces).