Message #10918

[martinastro]

I thought this message on the comet mailing list was interesting...

There is one thing I would like to add. Maybe the impacts are not over with. It took several days for all of SL-9's pieces to strike Jupiter in 1994. What if the object that struck a couple of days ago was a fragment
of another shattered comet? It seems likely that SL-9 shattered during its close approach to Jupiter in 1992. Following its 1993 discovery, we watched as the comet's components drifted away from each other, so that it took six days for all 21 pieces to ultimately strike the planet. Now what if a comet had been shattered by Jupiter several years ago, instead of only two? Instead of hours between impacts, maybe it could be days. Obviously, if the components drift too far apart, other perturbations will divert the components into more distinct orbits, instead of all following in the same orbit.

Anyway, some food for thought.