[HN Gopher] Small Near-Earth Objects in the Taurid Resonant Swarm
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       Small Near-Earth Objects in the Taurid Resonant Swarm
        
       Author : bikenaga
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2025-09-29 18:25 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
        
       | chermi wrote:
       | From the wiki on Encke, "Comet Encke is _believed_ to be the
       | originator of several related meteor showers known as the Taurids
       | (which are encountered as the Northern and Southern Taurids
       | across November, and the Beta Taurids in late June and early
       | July).[29] A shower has similarly been reported affecting Mercury
       | ". Italics mine.
       | 
       | I'm very surprised we don't have sufficient data to definitively
       | pin the origin of meteor showers. There's only so many degrees of
       | freedom. I'd guess maybe the problem is the objects in the shower
       | are too small to detect before entry, and by the time they enter,
       | their dynamics are too messed up by breaking apart to retrace
       | their pre-entry trajectory? But we also have the LHC... We're
       | pretty good at scattering reconstruction. I know it's not exactly
       | the same, but it's surprising this isn't solved.
       | 
       | Edit- As an aside, for "Tunguska" sized meteors, how harmful
       | would they be if they landed only with terminal earth velocity?
       | I'm guessing relatively safe(1)? It seems possible we could mess
       | with their orbits enough if we strapped rockets to them to make
       | them approach earth at specified trajectories to land in Siberia
       | or something and mine them. Or rail guns from the moon to
       | redirect them? (I just watched the expanse lol). I know there's
       | at least one startup trying to mine asteroids, but I think they
       | want to do it in space. Maybe that makes more sense. Still, I
       | assume they must be planning on dropping smaller mined+maybe
       | partially refined chunks down to earth in a similar fashion.
       | 
       | Maybe controlling/predicting trajectories is harder than I
       | thought though.
       | 
       | (1) Asked Gemini real quick and it estimates approximately 200
       | times weaker if Tunguska "dropped" from top of atmosphere
       | relative to the actual blast. But I know Gemini is bad at math,
       | so...
        
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