First ever (confirmed) evidence of a comet striking Earth

phys.org...

The first ever evidence of a comet entering Earth's atmosphere and exploding, raining down a shock wave of fire which obliterated every life form in its path, has been discovered by a team of South African scientists and international collaborators.

The comet entered Earth's atmosphere above Egypt about 28 million years ago. As it entered the atmosphere, it exploded, heating up the sand beneath it to a temperature of about 2 000 degrees Celsius, and resulting in the formation of a huge amount of yellow silica glass which lies scattered over a 6 000 square kilometre area in the Sahara. A magnificent specimen of the glass, polished by ancient jewellers, is found in Tutankhamun's brooch with its striking yellow-brown scarab.

At the centre of the attention of this team was a mysterious black pebble found years earlier by an Egyptian geologist in the area of the silica glass. After conducting highly sophisticated chemical analyses on this pebble, the authors came to the inescapable conclusion that it represented the very first known hand specimen of a comet nucleus, rather than simply an unusual type of meteorite.

Preparing for comet ISON with some of the calendar date positions and what to expect
phys.org...

I have read several articles about the Saharan green glass and Tutankhamun's brooch with its yellow-brown scarab which has been in the past attributed to some celestial event which caused the melted glass formations over some 6000 miles in the Sahara.

Something I have considered (places reinforced tin foil hat and air conditioned body armor on) is the possibility with the reports of comet ISON breaking apart ... If it continues to break apart visions of Jupiter and Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 comes to mind as we pass through the trailing debris around mid January 2014.

So I started looking around to see how close of an approach we might have.

www.nightskyinfo.com...

On January 14th and 15th, 2014, the Earth does not move through Comet ISON's tail, it only passes briefly close to its orbit. Assuming that cometary debris is present in ISON's orbit nearly one hundred days behind the nucleus, the extremely tiny grains of dust will hit the Earth's upper atmosphere at 35 miles per second (56 km per second).

(hangs up hat and armor for another day)
ISON will not be a threat to Earth - getting no closer to Earth than about 40 million miles on Dec. 26, 2013 as it enters above the solar plain.... so far with the latest guesstiments it appears the earth will miss the core of the tail and most of, if any, debris that might be trailing . All the possible tail crossing happens after ISON goes around the sun; read further.

I personally think ISON will be torn apart by it's closest approach to the sun.. If it is indeed torn apart, then the close approach to the tail after it's (passage behind the sun) would be non existent... Or?

Hope the calculators have all this stuff figured out, No? If ISON is truly torn apart; will it act like a shotgun with the remaining pieces (large and small) fanning out due to the sling shot effect and gravity? (Back to looking at the armor).... Just some thoughts and mind games on my part; maybe someone else can add more to this scenario.
Everything you might want to know about ISON


For those whose day is not complete without a little doom porn the following is for you.

reply to post by 727Sky


Hmmm this is very cool if true because I have about 80 grams of comet glass at the house

mmmmmm doom porn......

my wifes going to be mad at me.

reply to post by 727Sky


So if this is proven how about the ries valley and all that moldivite...would this apply there too even though they probably won't find the evidence there as looking in a forest on a mountain is much harder than a desert.

Thanks for putting my mind, right at ease on this subject. I mean, there just haven't been enough guessing (logically on occasions) about what this ISON is going to do. However, currently I prefer yours the best!!!

That is all!!

No, no wait this is ISON and not some other Comet? I mean people have been posting pictures of other comets on here!! Phage, usually shows them the error of of their ways though.

Seriously though, I do like this version of 'ISON - The movie.

Wow that is cool!

I think I made a thread about this meteor, it was about a documentary discussing how glass was formed in the area. If these two meteors are related, then this is very cool because I'm pretty sure it does not mention that it is the first within the teams documentary. This must of surfaced later. Mystery Of The Sahara Desert Glass

Cool find, thank you.

reply to post by RickyD


The only thing I have heard about Moldavite is it is a rare, glassy, translucent, dark green gemstone that is mined in the Czech Republic.... everything I know or can remember about it...... it is claimed to be from a meteorite with crater and all..

reply to post by 727Sky


Yeah, many metaphysical minded people say moldavite is from the meteor itself, but I think it is more likely to be created from the impact, like the glass in your OP.
Which is very interesting by the way, thank you!

reply to post by 727Sky


Moldavite???


Wasn't Dr. DOOM,,a "Moldavite"????



or was it Moldovia??? lol

reply to post by 727Sky


It is a tektite the same as Libyan Desert Glass not a gem/stone. It is rarer than LDG yes but with a ton of similarities. It has been theorized that it was caused by a meteor that fell in germany and ejected a plume of debris into space which froze and fell back as moldivite.

Wiki

RickyD
reply to post by 727Sky

 

Hmmm this is very cool if true because I have about 80 grams of comet glass at the house

Ooh...let's smoke it !
I wonder what'll happen ?

reply to post by sealing


No way bro...I am gonna eventually have it melted to make "functional glass art" from space

The comet entered Earth's atmosphere above Egypt about 28 million years ago. As it entered the atmosphere, it exploded, heating up the sand beneath it to a temperature of about 2 000 degrees Celsius, and resulting in the formation of a huge amount of yellow silica glass which lies scattered over a 6 000 square kilometre area in the Sahara. A magnificent specimen of the glass, polished by ancient jewellers, is found in Tutankhamun's brooch with its striking yellow-brown scarab.

Wow this is amazing for a different reason than the one discussed in the O.P. - until now, the prevailing theory on that glass formation of desert sand was that ancient civilizations had some kind of nuclear power source or other way of making the extreme heat required to turn that sand into glass. No one knew of any other way.

The theory is used in The Atlantis Blueprint when talking about pre-historical societies.

I Hope (pray) the Sun cooks it!!

With regards to the disintegration of comet ISON I found this. See the rest of the article in the link for explanation of 'the evidence presented above'

The Comets Page

3. WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY OF COMET ISON DISINTEGRATING ?
In view of the evidence presented above it is virtually certain that comet ISON will disintegrate. Why? Because the four comets that have presented the Slope Discontinuity Event + U-shape have disintegrated.
The fact that the comet is exhibiting a brigtness increase does not mean that the object is safe from disintegrating, as can be discerned from the behavior of comets LINEAR and Elenin.
This dispels the notion that comets are unpredictable.
In the past, comets have announced that they are going to disintegrate by exhibiting the Slope Discontinuity+U-shape signature.

In the case of comet Hönig it took 54 days after the Event to disintegrate. Comet Tabur took about 90 days. Comet ISON is taking more than 9 months.

Also, the very sharp discontinuity of slope at the Event implies that this can not be an outburst. There is some fundamental physical process that goes on here that we do not understand. Or if this is an outburst, it is a very different kind of outburst than the ones we have known up to now.

It is entering the Danger Zone and condition is Orange. I don't know about the fragments and where they would go either, but if it disintegrates near our orbit heading in for its trip around the sun who knows January 12th or so could get very interesting.

reply to post by whatnext21


If it breaks up the fragments will go the same way it would have gone as a single cohesive block. Where its going is predictable and has been predicted. There is nothing to worry about with this. The celestial object to worry about is the one we haven't seen coming.

reply to post by darkbake


Actually that has never been a prevailing theory...I am a big rock hound and have researched tektites quite a bit. Never once has that theory come up in anything I would consider a trusted a source. Please refrain from misrepresenting your ideas it's not helpful for anyone.

www.nature.com...
Comet expected to survive close Sun encounter

“That’s what makes it so unusual,” says Matthew Knight, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. “There may be totally unexpected things that come up.” Knight, who has dedicated much of his time to observing the comet, says that ISON may be just big and dense enough to survive its close call with the Sun. He laid out his reasoning on 9 October at a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Denver, Colorado.

Knight and Kevin Walsh, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, used mathematical simulations to study whether ISON will be ripped apart2. Observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as smaller telescopes, suggest that ISON is between 1 and 4 kilometres across. Given characteristics of other comets that have survived close encounters with the Sun, such as 1965’s Ikeya-Seki, the team suggests that ISON is big enough not to be vaporized.

But Knight says that the comet could still be tidally disrupted, depending on how dense it is. If it has a typical density, ISON should make it mostly intact. If it is less dense, it may disintegrate as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 did before colliding with Jupiter in 1994.

it may disintegrate as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 did before colliding with Jupiter in 1994... Is what my worse case scenario envisions along with the possibility of being impacted by some small but large enough piece to mess things up like the 6000 miles of the Sahara. Probably will not happen and after ISON goes around the sun we should have a better idea of what is going on. It is my understanding ISON will be traveling over 400,000 MPH as it whips around the sun.. Even if gravity and mass changed the projected path of the full comet (not the pieces) due to whatever like a coronal mass ejection nothing we could do about it but bend over and bury our heads, because nothing we have today could stop an impact.

If ISON breaks apart as it zips around the sun breaking into different pieces with different mass then IMO the pieces left will not maintain the original projected orbit of the full comet ISON.

reply to post by 727Sky

If ISON breaks apart as it zips around the sun breaking into different pieces with different mass then IMO the pieces left will not maintain the original projected orbit of the full comet ISON.

Why? Do things fall at different rates depending on their mass?
Galileo sort of figured that answer out.
Kepler found it worked for planets.
Newton found it worked for everything.

An orbit is a freefall. The mass of an object has no effect on the way it falls.

I have a piece of Libyan Glass from the desert. Supposedly made from a Meteorite strike on sand. Its yellow in color