Comet Elenin: Just Passing By
Is Earth's impending doom close at hand?
It starts out innocently enough: a small speck against a field of background stars, barely noticeable in the image data. But… it’s a speck that wasn’t there before. Subsequent images confirm its existence – there’s something out there. Something bright, something large, and it’s moving through our solar system very quickly. The faint blur indicates that it’s a comet, an icy visitor from the outermost reaches of the solar system. And it’s headed straight toward Earth.
Exhaustive calculations are run and re-run. Computer simulations are executed. All possibilities are taken into consideration, and yet there’s no alternative to be found; our world will face a close encounter with a comet in mere months’ time. Phone calls are made, a flurry of electronic messages fly between computer terminals across the world, consultations are held with top experts in the field. We are unprepared… what can we do? What does this mean for civilization as we know it? What will this speeding icy bullet from outer space do to our planet?
The answer? Nothing.
Nothing at all. In fact, it probably won’t even be very interesting to look at – if you can evenfind it when it passes by.
(Sorry for the let-down.)
There’s been a lot of buzz in the past several months regarding Comet Elenin, a.k.a. C/2010 X1, which was discovered by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010. Elenin spotted the comet using a telescope in New Mexico remotely from his location in Lyubertsy, Russia. At that time it was about 647 million kilometers (401 million miles) from Earth… in the time since it has closed the distance considerably, and is now around 270 million km away. Elenin is a long-period comet, which means it has a rather large orbit around the Sun… it comes in from a vast distance, swings around the Sun and heads back out to the depths of the solar system – a round trip lasting over 10,000 years. During its current trip it will pass by Earth on October 16, coming as close as 35 million km (22 million miles).
Elenin's orbit via the JPL Small-Body Database Browser
Yes, 22 million miles.
That’s pretty far.
Way too far for us to be affected by anything a comet has to offer. Especially a not-particularly-large comet like Elenin.
Some of the doomy-gloomy internet sites have been mentioning the size of Elenin as being 80,000 km across. This is a scary, exaggerated number that may be referring to the size of Elenin’s coma – a hazy cloud of icy particles that surrounds a much, much smaller nucleus. The coma can be extensive but is insubstantial; it’s akin to icy cigarette smoke. Less than that, in fact… a comet’s coma and tail are even more of a vacuum than can be reproduced in a lab on Earth! In reality most comets have a nucleus smaller than 10km…that’s less than a billionth the mass of Earth (and a far cry from 80,000 km.) We have no reason to think that Elenin is any larger than this – it’s most likely smaller.
Ok, but how about the gravitational and/or magnetic effect of a comet passing by Earth? That’s surely got to do something, right? To Earth’s crust, or the tides? For the answer to that, I will refer to Don Yeomans, a researcher at NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL:
“Comet Elenin will not only be far away, it is also on the small side for comets. And comets are not the most densely-packed objects out there. They usually have the density of something akin to loosely packed icy dirt,” said Yeomans. “So you’ve got a modest-sized icy dirtball that is getting no closer than 35 million kilometers. It will have an immeasurably miniscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean’s tides than comet Elenin ever will.”
“It will have an immeasurably miniscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean’s tides than comet Elenin ever will.”– Don Yeomans, NASA / JPL
And as far as the effect from Elenin’s magnetic field goes… well, there is no effect. Elenin, like all comets, doesn’t have a magnetic field. Not much else to say there.
June 10th, 2011 | 
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What’s new with Comet Elenin
While it’s not unusual for a fresh comet from the outer solar system like Elenin to brighten early on and then stall or not live up to expectations – think of Comet Kohoutek – let’s hope the comet still has some fresh ice and dust left for a good show.
This photo of Comet Kohoutek was taken on January 11, 1974. Although the comet did become visible with the naked eye, it never reached brightness predictions, disappointing an expectant public. Credit: NASA
In the case of Kohoutek, which graced our skies in late 1973, astronomers believed it was making its first trip to the inner solar system and carried a full complement of highly volatile ices. When exposed to the sun after so many thousands of years in the deep chill of deep space, its ices were expected to vaporize like crazy and loft lots of dust from Kohoutek’s interior into space to create a spectacular tail and brilliant coma. Such rosy predictions never came to pass. When Kohoutek failed to fill the bill, its name quickly became a worldwide joke. Even today, I still hear the occasional “sounds like another Kohoutek” when someone refers to an astronomical event that didn’t live up to expectations.
Comet Elenin recently resumed its normal eastward motion against the stars as it moves through the constellation Leo in the coming month. The tick marks show the comet's position every five days. Credit: Created with Chris Marriott's SkyMap software
We won’t pass judgement so swiftly on Elenin. Comets are sometimes unpredictable. That’s what gives them their charm, and the reason I’ve tracked so many of them at every hour of the night over the years. I like surprises.
Currently Comet Elenin is moving eastward in the constellation Leo the Lion not far from its brightest star Regulus. It coma or cocoon of dust and gas that shrouds the nucleus measured some 62,000 miles across in late May. That sounds huge, but we’re talking the envelope around the actual comet, which is little more than a tiny spark of light buried deeply in the coma’s center. Scientists estimate the comet nucleus itself – what makes the coma - is a few miles in diameter.
The Event and Comet Elenin
The Event is a fictional NBC television show featuring a black U.S. President grappling with the national security problem of whether or not to tell the U.S. public about the existence of extraterrestrial life. Comet Elenin is a long-period body from the Oort cloud that is approaching the inner solar system and has been associated with major earthquake activity on Earth. What is the relationship between Comet Elenin and the Event? Perhaps nothing; or, maybe, a very lot indeed. For there is an important paradox surrounding Comet Elenin. The solution to the paradox may well have been revealed in the season finale of the Event. Were elements of the U.S. government using a fictional television show to break to the world public something with tremendous global significance that might soon unfold? Read on.
Even though Comet Elenin was only discovered in December 2010 by Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin, its passage through the solar system could be tracked back to when it entered the solar system by a very useful orbiting tracking software that NASA's JPL makes freely available to the public. Something remarkable was found by a Bosnian earth scientist who tracked Elenin's orbital passage back to 2006. Dr Mensur Omerbashich found that Elenin was aligned with the Earth and other planets when major earthquakes had appeared. In a paper released on an online science archive, he outlines the most significant alignments featuring Elenin that he claims are linked to seismic activities on Earth.
The remarkable discovery by Dr Omerbashich suggests that Elenin was something very large, with an enormous mass and gravitational field to be able to influence seismic events on Earth from a very long distance going back as far as 2006. Elenin's size and mass could be even as big as brown dwarf star as some conspiracy theorists have been arguing has been secretly known to be approaching the inner solar system. In 1983, the Washington Post and New York Times published articles about a large mysterious planet X that could be a brown dwarf that was part of our solar system. According to some researchers, planet X was none other than the planet Nibiru revealed in the first published book by the recently deceased scholar of Sumerian history, Zecharia Sitchin.
Elenin Comet Heading For Earth And Continued UpdatesJune 18, 2011In 1976, Sitchin wrote The 12th Planet (he included the moon and the sun as planets) which according to ancient Sumerian cuneiform texts was Nibiru, the home world of extraterrestrials called the Anunnaki. Nibiru or Planet X, was a long-period body that took 3600 years to revolve around our solar system. According to Sitchin, each time Nibiru/Planet X passed through our inner solar system, major destruction would occur to nearby planets. For some researchers, Elenin's seismic influence on Earth is a sign that it is Nibiru. Some go as far as claim that the name Elenin, is in fact a code for Extinction Level Event Nibiru is Near (ELENIN).
New Pictures of Elenin – Click Here, June – I will not post them here as they have copyright.
Today, June 10, 2011, is six months since the discovery of the first comet in the modern history of Russia. During this time our knowledge about the comet has greatly changed. In the first days after the comet’s discovery, the comet’s orbit did not inspire interest; C/2010 X1 (Elenin)was going to be a faint comet, visible only to telescopes equipped with CCD cameras. But after only the first week of observations, hope was growing that this comet might have a close perihelion, which was later confirmed.
Now we know that the comet will come practically as close as the orbit of Mercury to the Sun and will possibly become visible to the unaided eye. It is unlikely to become a Great Comet, but for me, as its discoverer, it has already become a momentous event. My dreams of many years have been realized.
During the last six months the comet has aroused a lot of interest among the people of the Earth; among the huge number of letters about the end of the world, I also received those about people who became interested in astronomy and observing, who bought telescopes and discovered for themselves the beauty of the night sky. This is possibly the most important effect caused by my comet. Of course the comet poses no threat to the Earth and all the rumors will end when it starts moving away from the Earth and Sun. The same thing happened with the famous comet Hale-Bopp and will be repeated more than once in the future.
I ran the calculations of the orbit for the period from 2011 to 15,000. Of course, in such a long time interval, the accuracy of the calculations will be limited but quite acceptable for a general understanding of the orbital parameters of Comet C/2010 X1. At aphelion the comet will be ~1030 AU from the Sun and will not return toward the Sun until the 8th century of the 14th millennium…
Comet Elenin.org
Elenin is an average sized comet that was discovered by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin on December 10, 2010. It is also known as comet C/2010 X1. It is a long-period comet and takes about 10,000 years to complete one orbit around our Sun.
The most recent prediction is Elenin will be closest to Earth sometime in September. The exact trajectory of the comet still has some uncertainty.
There are many conspiracy theories regarding this comet.
Much ado about Comet Elenin
June 17, 2011
Categories: Crime
Most scientists, of course, don’t believe that Comet Elenin has a strong enough magnetic field to have any effect on Earth.
“Comet Elenin will not only be far away, it is also on the small side for comets. And comets are not the most densely-packed objects out there. They usually have the density of something akin to loosely packed icy dirt,” said Yeomans. “So you’ve got a modest-sized icy dirtball that is getting no closer than 35 million kilometers. It will have an immeasurably miniscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean’s tides than comet Elenin ever will.” (Don Yeomans, NASA researcher)
I’m not saying I believe that the poles will shift and the Earth will end as it passes through the comet’s tail. But I’m not sure I would place all of my faith in scientists – after all, scientists have a bad habit of lacking imagination and an appreciation for the magic of the Universe.
Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/astrologicalmusings/2011/06/much-ado-about-comet-elenin.html#ixzz1Ppygeiln
Do you think that Elenin is something bigger than Scientists are making it out to be? Do you think there is too much hype around this comet? What about whether it is actually Niburu or Planet X or otherwise?
If this is something big, are you prepared? Have you done your basic preparedness for things like loss of job, earthquake, fire, flood, tornado, or other things in which you might need to use your preparedness skills and items?
Do you have a 72 hour kit? Do you have rotating food storage? Do you have water storage? Do you have a family preparedness plan in the case of fire, earthquake, or other emergency? I think that planning for the basic emergencies trumps going underground in a panic just in case a comet might hit earth.
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