Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9

Its immense gravity drew in dangerous comets and asteroids, keeping them from nuking us during our many fragile transition periods.

Uh, we just saw it shred Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, pulling it into its depths, uh, instead of allowing it to hurdle into the inner solar system.

All these elements, from phosphorus to the magnetosphere to big bro Jupiter, there are so many Goldilocks that they're hard to keep track of.

So if that many things had to line up, could this really just be luck? An enormous cosmic coincidence? The only spot in the universe where this happened? Or is it all just a bit too perfect? As far as we can see, we're the only sign of life in the universe.

This is not a small astronomical event, and the professionals have always been beaten out by the amateurs seeing, uh, things like this.

Uh, Hale-Bopp, Shoemaker-Levy 9, all discovered by amateur astronomers before the professionals.

So we're very astute.

If something's coming in, we're gonna see it.

Comets in particular are often discovered by amateur astronomers.

Two particularly famous recent comets, Comet Hale-Bopp and Shoemaker-Levy 9, were co-discovered by amateur astronomers Thomas Bopp and Carolyn Shoemaker.

Shoemaker in particular was incredibly active, discovering or co-discovering 32 comets, 377 minor planets, and over 800 asteroids.

Supernovae are also fair game for amateurs.

They didn't say how big that one was, but it did say that the debris trail will hit us hard.

Well, folks that don't know, Shoemaker-Levy comment crashing one of the gas giants 30 years ago.

Now they've got the satellite topography scanning systems.

It turns out there's giant craters all over the Earth, just like the moon.

And so that's why so much stuff changes here, absolutely.

People are worried about climate change.

People better be worried about a big-ass comet breaking up in six or seven pieces like Shoemaker-Levy and hitting our ass.

Let's pull up Shoemaker-Levy comet, please.

That's absolutely true.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994 was a dramatic demonstration of Jupiter's gravitational influence as the planet absorbed the comet's fragments, highlighting its role as a shield for the inner solar system.

Just to get off topic a little bit, but let our listeners know, had Jupiter not been there, had that comet hit the Earth, how much destructive power would it have distributed?

The impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter released energy equivalent to 6 million megatons of TNT.

Had that hit Earth, it would have been absolutely catastrophic, releasing about 600 times the combined power of the entire world's nuclear arsenal.

Could they have knocked our planet out of its orbit or knocked it off its axis?

Pero, ¿recuerdas lo destructivo del impacto de Chelyabinsk? Con eso en mente, tal vez te pongas un poco nervioso al saber que la órbita de este gigante se aproxima a la de la Tierra cada seis años.

Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Este cometa no tiene la menor chance de colisionar contra la Tierra y eso se debe a que ya impactó contra Júpiter en 1994.

Pero, ¿te imaginas el daño que hubiera causado este cometa de uno punto cinco a dos kilómetros de largo en nuestro planeta? Al entrar en contacto con la gravedad de Júpiter, se rompió en veinte pedazos, siendo las colisiones de estos fragmentos tan poderosas como la detonación de trescientas bombas atómicas.

Columnas de escombros se dispararon a unos dos mil y tres mil kilómetros de altura y la atmósfera se calentó hasta unos infernales treinta mil a cuarenta mil grados Celsius.

Te debería aliviar el hecho de que Shoemaker-Levy 9 nunca impactará contra nosotros.

Ceres.

Por último, pero no por eso menos importante, está un asteroide tan grande que es clasificado como un planeta enano.

I'm betting against, I'm betting against the Jupiter experiment.

The Shoemaker-Levy comets didn't set it off, and I'm gonna tell you, that kinetic energy

energyOh, that's not what it's all about.

It's not about the energy.