Where do all the Comets go. . .?

I searched out of genuine curiosity to learn an answer to this and didn't see it here. Actually, I haven't seen a logical one on the net either, so I come here to present the topic for consideration.


Where DO all the comets go? We've watched many come into our Solar System and some fly into Planets like Jupiter quite awhile back or right into the sun. Many others slingshot around our Sun and head back out to wherever it is they go when they leave here.

Now a large number of these aren't all that mysterious at all and they make turn arounds well inside our own Solar System to come back that way. Similar to the Asteroids we hear and see things about more often.



Others go further...and the mystery starts out there somewhere beyond our direct observation but within our sight for the effects.



And of course there are.....other theories...



However, even these do not cover the question I've come to and what I really am baffled with. Even the theoretical existence of Tyche or of Nemesis would follow a logical relation to our sun as the graviational center of their various orbits. What is there on the other end of the long period Comets? Where does this one go?


This is Comet West. It's Orbital time is described as Chaotic but it's most distant point from our sun is estimated as far as 1.1 Light Years.

and finally, for examples to ponder is Sedna...




Now these last two have very different points where they're estimated to make their turn around, but what is it they turn around? Our Sun is a very large and impressive Body, as I think we'd all agree. It forms this side of their round trips...so doesn't it stand to reason they are making a celestial U-turn around something similar and at least as large?

To go one step further with that....If some of these are objects we're confident come back again and again...and NASA seems quite confident on that point...then doesn't that suggest relations between our Sun and other large Bodies out there we can't necessarily see let alone understand? If there weren't, how would Sedna or Comet West way out there, a light year away, come back at the proper angles to find our little dot in the vastness (as it sure would be from that end of the trip)?

Sorry if this is a question with some basic answer that I'm just not seeing....but it's a problem I've spent more than one evening wondering about while looking through Space imagery and material.

So... Where DO all the Comets go?

Edit: Removed the wrong answear

Wait?
I see that i completly missunderstood your question, and did some more searching, sorry about that.

Sedna aparently is a planetoid and not a comet

This is what i found.
www.darkstar1.co.uk...
And some more here.
www.gps.caltech.edu...

I thought space was a continuum that never ends, and if that's the case then it's just like the energizer bunny where it just keeps going and going.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000
They dont go anywhere,because after a comet has eventually burned off all of its outer layers,that we see in the process of burning off as its tail,it becomes an asteroid.Comets and asteroids are the same thing...

"The distinction between "asteroids" and "comets" has now started to blur seriously" >
www.spacedaily.com...

Hmm. Never thought about it. Now you have me wondering. I'm sure there are some astronomers here on ATS that can answer this question but now I can't sleep cause I want to know.

Once these comets swing around our sun and go back to their origin what makes them turn back around instead of just keeping on and flying out into eternity?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I'm not sure what you're asking here.....In it's simplest terms our solar system deforms the fabric of space like a large rock sitting on a stretched out sheet.....If you roll some ping pong balls (comets) at it, they will circle the depression at different rates, and speeds, traveling in different oblong circles...all according to the angle and speed at which you roll them. Add to that some larger sized balls called planets (say billiard ball sized in this example) which also deform the sheet, as they also circle the large rock (our sun), and you get a complex set of variables that cause the smaller ping pong balls (comets) to circle in any number of ways.....The reason they turn around and circle back is the same reason the larger balls do....gravity.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

so doesn't it stand to reason they are making a celestial U-turn around something similar and at least as large?

To go one step further with that....If some of these are objects we're confident come back again and again...and NASA seems quite confident on that point...then doesn't that suggest relations between our Sun and other large Bodies out there we can't necessarily see let alone understand?

In fact, the way I see it, it would rule out larger bodies...

If astronomers can correctly predict a comets return, then it shows that there is no other larger unknown body near it to effect it's trajectory.

reply to post by Chadwickus


Such as Halley's Comet.
Here

or here (wiki)

For another massive body to be out there would make calculations wayyyyyyy different!
Its a long journey though, I hope I get to see its return too (I saw it back in 1986)

I found some more here, which just ad more to the mystery.

www.humanresonance.org...

Explaining the extremely long eliptical orbit is a significant problem for astronomy as any solution would have to involve another large body orbiting with Sedna to keep it coming back to Sol every 12,260 years. Sedna's mass in itself cannot sustain its orbital path without major help from what is likely a Brown Dwarf companion star - a twin dark sun as is described throughout ancient lore.

solar-heliospheric.engin.umich.edu...reply to post by Wrabbit2000


excellent quest..I have always wondered myself

I say go outside with any object of semi durable construction, and throw it up into the air.
Throw it up into the air again, this time higher.
Throw it as high as you can, and no matter how high you manage to throw it, it always comes back.

does it 'orbit' around something at the pinnacle of it's arc? No, well, kinda no.
Kinda no, because it is orbiting for that spare few inches or feet of lateral distance it may travel 'around' the earth, and by degrees the sun too.

Now, these comets and long period objects. They're pretty much the same thing. they're just tossed really high, to fall back 'down' into the gravity well of everything that's travelling around the sun.

There is, of course, an escape velocity similar as to how our spacecraft need reach certain speeds just to achieve orbit.

There's also these really neat voids of gravitational cancellation, or equilibrium called Lagrange and Trojan Points around planets where supposedly all sorts of potentially interesting stuff collects like dust in a belly button.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

What is it (comets) turn around? Our Sun... forms this side of their round trips...so doesn't it stand to reason they are making a celestial U-turn around something similar and at least as large?

There is nothing at the other end.

In a gravitational two-body problem with negative energy both bodies follow similar elliptic orbits with the same orbital period around their common barycenter. Source

'Barycentre' here means the centre of gravity of the system. The orbit of the Sun around that centre is tiny, because the Sun is huge compared to the comet. In practice, the Sun stays put (relatively speaking) at one focus of the ellipse the comet describes round it. The other focus is empty.

If there was a third body involved the orbit would cease to be elliptical and become complex, possibly chaotic. Collection of Remarkable 3-Body Motions

If some of these are objects we're confident come back again and again... doesn't that suggest relations between our Sun and other large bodies out there we can't necessarily see let alone understand?

It doesn't, but there may well be such bodies. One hypothesis of comet generation is that a planet or planets orbit the Sun way out there in the Oort Cloud, periodically dislodging comets from their orbit with their gravity and hurling them sunwards. Whether this is true or not, the Sun almost certainly has more planets than the ones we've found. For that matter, I've heard it proposed that the Sun itself is part of a binary system with another star. How that star is supposed to have escaped detection by astronomers I do not know.

How would Sedna or Comet West way out there, a light year away, come back at the proper angles to find our little dot in the vastness?

Newton's laws of motion and universal gravitation will deliver them reliably, time after time.

Where DO all the Comets go?

Out into the dark and cold, whence they came. But they will return.

Originally posted by mikelkhall
Hmm. Never thought about it. Now you have me wondering. I'm sure there are some astronomers here on ATS that can answer this question but now I can't sleep cause I want to know.

Once these comets swing around our sun and go back to their origin what makes them turn back around instead of just keeping on and flying out into eternity?

It looks like I had mixed success with trying to convey exactly what has had me wondering, but you got it 100% there. It is something to nag at you once you start to think on it, isn't it?

The other variable that occurred to me with very long period ones like Comet West with a possible return period well into the 100,000's of thousands of years, is that our Solar System is in constant motion relative to everything else. As I understand it, it's what gives NASA types the biggest headaches. We can't just shoot a probe at a star because everything is perceptions of where it used to be... right?

So...Where we were when the Comet swung around our sun is nowhere near where we'll be when it makes the other side of the trip and starts to come back...which will be nowhere remotely close to where we'll be when it gets all the way back to make the round trip complete.

It sure suggests layers of complexity and interaction with rather large systems of some sort out there.

(for anyone wondering...there is no tie in to doom or 2012 or anything of that sort...it's purely the curiosity and wonder of what the extremely long orbits suggest for more being out there and interacting)

reply to post by Astyanax

'Barycentre' here means the centre of gravity of the system. The orbit of the Sun around that centre is tiny, because the Sun is huge compared to the comet. In practice, the Sun stays put (relatively speaking) at one focus of the ellipse the comet describes round it.

The other focus is empty. If there was a third body involved the orbit would cease to be elliptical and become complex, possibly chaotic. Collection of Remarkable 3-Body Motions

I appreciate what you're saying and it does make sense to a great many of the objects. However, it doesn't seem to make much logical sense to the very long ones. As it happens, the designation for Comet West is listed as Chaotic and has a return period estimated with the range of 250,000 Years to possible Millions. So, it would appear to have a mysterious journey out there.

Sedna is calculated rather precisely and the depictions of it's orbits are rather tight and well defined. At least as it appears, it isn't taking a leisurely stroll around an orbit but a long run out, a pronounced turn and a long run back.



If the graphics are anything remotely close to accurate then we can clearly see our own Solar System snug on one end of its endless laps....what is snug on the other end? How can the graphic suggest anything BUT something on that other end to serve as the other turn-around?

Sedna isn't meant to be a special object of focus..but one of the recent ones we've discovered and plotted with a degree of real confidence. I'm sure there are countless more and in other directions we'll find over time.

I'm truly curious and open to understanding...I'm not posting to carry any agenda at all. This is one of those little things that have nagged for a long time when it's quiet and my thoughts get to wandering around.

First, your third illustration of cometary orbits that is labeled Tyche is a wrong interpretation and points out a sticking point about comets in general. A correct depictation of a long-period cometary orbit would have it look like a very, very elongated toothpick. The turning point at the Sun would be at the extreme point of one end. We think of it as a huge sweeping, 180-degree curve, but it actually is virtually an impossibly tight motion that "nature" is making. This is no better shown than with the notorious "sungrazers" that come and go from a point in deep space near Sirius. They virtually skim the outer surface of the Sun and head back exactly from where they came. The long length of its shape outlined by the coming and going paths would be virtually side by side for billions of miles, parallel, indistinguishable from straight lines.

It is extremely doubtful that nature could so provide these objects with the exact degree of precise, necessary angular momentum to complete their successful turn. After all, they supposedly have fallen out of a roundish original orbit that would have little bearing on the infalling motion that the Sun demands. Yet their infalling orbits just barely miss the Sun time after time and they return to the exact position from which they came. That is exactly what about all of these comets do. Time after time. We could never dream of obtaining such percision in our attempts at astrophysics. The several variables would be too great to expect a success without some degree of control in the motion. Therein is the secret that they don't want you to recognize about the motions of comets: that they exhibit some degree of contol over their destinies while being "natural" objects.

Heaven forgbid that it might be assumed that the comas are gaseous shields insulating the body of the comet and that the ion tales are simple, low-thrust propulsion devices fine-tuning the position of the cometary body as it approaches the critical final approach to the sun.

View comets as the UFOs of deep space that cannot be ignored. The best scientist can do is to try to explain them away.

Interesting question and I dont know the answer but it could well be that the Euclidian geometery of space (Space as a flat surface with objects "rolling" around larger mass objects) people use to describe orbital planes is the issue.

If we instead consider space as a 3D environment (which it is) where space itself ( as in Quantised Space) has an energy gradient increasing and decreasing around mass, phase (or any other number of variables -observed or unobserved) it becomes easier to imagine the Universe-wide influences that could affect wandering masses.

The energy gradient in the quanta of space could mean that mass objects like Comets take the path of least resistance once in motion , appearing to be on eliptical orbits but in fact are just moving in a straight line through the energy gradient of quantised space.

This is just a hypothesis but the idea that space is just a constant with no effect on masses moving through it seems anti intuitive to me and our Earth based view of gravity/ the effects it produces is probably only half the story....

Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Gravitons etc etc are all touted as possible answers to the dilemnas we cant explain ( Black Holes, Gravity etc) but we overlook the forces of Quantum Space and the possible forces it exerts on every object with mass that sits in its soup.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000
I think comets only light up and form a tail when they begin to approach near to a star,when they start being effected by a stars solar wind and so usually comets are just aimlessly drifting around as dark and silent objects,someday to collide with something,or travel close to a large moon,planet or stars gravity and be flung further in or out of the solar system...

reply to post by Aliensun

Thank you for that reply. Your explanation and theory was interesting to read. The UFO's of deep space eh? That is a new way of looking at them, but you are hitting one of the things that bugs me here. The precision of the round trips. It's interesting to hear you put my thoughts into words on this for pointing out that NASA scientists would likely go insane trying to recreate one of these paths deliberately. At least, again, on the very long travelling ones.

That brings a benefit though and we don't need interstellar travel. These things have been to places we can't see for hundreds or even thousands of years in some cases. Wouldn't they be picking up material the whole time? So...if or when we can ever get probes or other man-made devices to reliably get to and investigate comets..maybe it represents a shortcut to learning about some very distant places with more than telescopes?

I'm not sure about intelligent control myself. but I suddenly do feel real small in looking up and outward to where there really must be a whole network of interacting forces we seem to be slowly....oh so very slowly....becoming aware of?

Note: Pardon the orbital graphics. This isn't my area and with Tyche in particular, it's giving a guess of an orbit for an object that is purely speculative at this point...but your note that the turns should be even sharper make for an interesting point to what I'm wondering about in the thread. Anyway..I found the best graphics I could for the specific points... Err. What can I say, when it's all theory?

I think a misconception here is that long period comets leave the solar system, turn around and come back. They don't. They are as much a part of the solar system as the eight known planets. They just have larger and more eccentric orbits.

They originate in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud where they orbit the sun at great distance in 'conventional' orbits. When disturbed by the gravitation of a relatively nearby star or other body, their orbits are disturbed and they 'fall' towards the sun. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they don't. The ones that don't hit the sun (or anything else) go around the sun in a tight arc and fly back to a tremendous distance before turning around again due to the suns gravity and repeat the process.

This continues until the comet either hits something or it disintigrates due to losing some of its mass during each flyby of the sun.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000

...These things have been to places we can't see for hundreds or even thousands of years in some cases. Wouldn't they be picking up material the whole time? So...if or when we can ever get probes or other man-made devices to reliably get to and investigate comets..maybe it represents a shortcut to learning about some very distant places with more than telescopes?

This should interest you...

Rosetta Mission

Rosetta's journey takes it out to 5.25 AU (about 790 million kilometres from the Sun). Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has a nucleus about 4 kilometres wide. It orbits around the Sun every 6.6 years, between 186 million kilometres and 857 million kilometres from the Sun.

Not a long period comet unfortunately, but it's a start!