So there is an article here
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/09/science/comet-tsuchinshan-atlas-earth
It speaks about a meteor that will be here in October and not return for 80000 years. I’m just wondering, why do meteors come back?
I assume it takes a lot of force to change the trajectory of a meteor, so wouldn’t it move in the same general direction forever and never come back?
In: Planetary Science
I feel like this one is gonna be much easier to explain with an illustration. YouTube search something like comet orbits and I’d imagine someone has a good visual that’ll be more helpful than the comments here
The comet is orbiting around the sun. This particular comet has a orbit that takes 80,000 years or so to complete.
The Earth is 1 Astronomical Unit (AU) away from the sun and we take 1 year to orbit the sun. Jupiter is 5.2 AU away from the sun (i.e. 5.2 times further away from the sun than Earth) and it takes 11.86 years to complete one orbit of the sun. Halley’s Comet has a orbit which stretches out to around 35AU away from the sun and takes 72-80 years to complete a orbit (the variable orbital period depends on whether it gets “distracted” by Jupiter and Saturn due to the comet orbiting in retrograde – i.e. the opposite direction compared to the rest of the planets).
Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan–ATLAS’s orbit takes it to around 1000 AU or so away from the sun and it is entirely possible that gravitational impacts from the various planets in our solar system could to cause the comet to exit the solar system entirely due to how far out it orbits – i.e. the wrong kind of nudge could give it enough energy to travel too far away from the sun to get drawn back in at all.
meteors don’t really come back like boomerangs. they’re usually part of larger objects like comets or asteroids. they follow orbits that can change over time so some might return after a long break. it’s like cosmic schedules that are hard to keep track of you know. time travel for rocks sounds fun tho
Latest Answers