By TRISHANK KARTHIK
One has only heard of how destructive the Day of Armageddon will be. In July 1994, mankind witnessed the first collision between a comet and a planet ever in recorded history.
The comet striked Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System, with roughly the same amount of energy as the impact caused by another comet believed to have occured 65 million years ago on Earth. The destructive impact of the comet on our planet caused the total wipe out of the dinosaurs and left a crater now recognized as the Gulf of Mexico in the Yucatan Peninsula. Consequence: surviving mammals on planet Earth evolved in a long period of time into a race of highly developed primates who now call themselves human beings.
Comet hunters at California's Palomar Observatory were shocked when they turned their heavenly gaze towards Jupiter in 1993. They found a comet that was not only trapped in orbit around the huge planet but had shattered into a train of 21 distinct pieces torn apart by Jupiter's massive gravitational forces.
The comet fragments pelted Jupiter's surface for six days starting July 16, 1994. The very first chunk of the comet hit the large planet at 19:28 Greenwich Time (GMT).
The impacts on the planet at 60 kilometres per second produced fireballs the size of Texas, disfigured Jupiter's signature cloud bands, and formed clouds that encircled the gaseous giant for months together. It was even speculated that the impact generated a Jovian version of the aurora borealis in red and yellow hues.
"This is a phenomenal event, and it's amazing that it's happening in our lifetime," said Lucy-Ann McFadden, the planetary scientist who coordinated viewing plans for NASA.
Before the impact, McFadden said, "When the bombardment begins, virtually every observatory in the world is going to be looking at Jupiter."
The comet was named as the Shoemaker-Levy comet after its founders, Eugene Shoemaker, Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker, a husband-and-wife team at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and colleague David Levy eagerly anticipated the celestial fireworks. The veteran threesome team find comets all the time, but the comet Carolyn Shoemaker spotted in images taken the night of March 23, 1993, has become the most memorable find of all.
"This probably happens only once in many lifetimes," said Eugene Shoemaker. "We're exremely lucky."
Jupiter may capture a comet, if only temporarily, two or three times a century, but a collision of this kind probably occurs only once every few thousand years.
Scientists calculated that the "lost" comet had been orbiting Jupiter for perhaps a century, too distant and too faint to be seen from our Earth. It is classified as a periodic comet, which means that it passes through the solar system more than once. If it didn't shatter into multiple light-reflecting fragments as it swept past Jupiter in July 1992, it would not have been noticed just in time for astronomers to observe the collision that has been labeled as the celestial event of the century.
This breathtaking event was captured photographically by satellites Voyager 2 and Galileo and the Hubble Space Telescope. The distant Voyager 2 detected a flash of ultraviolet light at the moment of impact while Galileo, which headed for a 1995 rendezvous with Jupiter, had the best view of the collision. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the most detailed images but did not have a direct view of the crash site. A spacecraft called Ulysses, speeding towards the sun, even listened for radio waves from electrical storms generated by the friction of the dust and gas passing through Jupiter's atmosphere!
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"This scenario of comet capture, breakup and liberation would mean that comets are not pristine bodies from afar, but rather broken fragments of earlier bodies," said Eugene Shoemaker. "Perhaps more important, it would mean they often arrive in concentrated storms." One of the significant results caused by this impact is that scientists have changed their perspectives about the working ways of comets.
The "squashed" Comet Shoemaker-Levy fueled the tantalizing hypothesis that Jupiter acts as a gravitational fulcrum, breaking up comets and raining them on the innner solar system in "comet showers". Some scientists think that the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have resulted from a comet shower set in motion years earlier at Jupiter, some four billion miles away. Shoemaker observed that, "You could have had a bombardment of these comets with Earth."
Scientists studying a layer of iridium, a very rare material on our planet, dated to 65 million years ago, the time the dinosaurs vanished, argue that the rare metallic element was deposited by a lone asteroid or comet impact. However, Shoemaker said the evidence shows two separate layers, laid down by successive impacts, perhaps from a comet storm.
Regardless of whether it was a single asteroid or a comet shower which wiped out the once mighty rulers of the Earth, Comet Shoemaker-Levy's collision with Jupiter helped scientists to test their models of catastrophic impacts.
The ways in which this celestial collision on Jupiter helped to instill fear in mankind is quite imminent. Man has always believed in the eventual destruction of his own planet. Almost every religion believes in the concept of the elements of evil wiped out by a another destructive element in order to create a rebirth of the good. Man, for the first time ever in recorded history, witnessed for himself how his own planet will be taken out of existence in the future.
The Comet Shoemaker-Levy must be one of the single main functions for why most of the people on our planet believe that the Day of Armageddon is getting closer. For example, a group of people belonging to a cult called the Heaven's Gate killed themselves in a mass suicide operation believing that an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) following the Hale-Bopp comet will guide them to Heaven from Earth after death.
Nowadays, the concept of Armageddon has been so closely linked with a probable collision of a comet or an asteroid with our planet. This has helped to spawn many blockbuster movies, including a Steven Spielberg production called "Deep Impact" and a Michael Bay film, "Armageddon". Thanks to Hollywood, the whole world now shares a common belief.
However, the next time mankind is going to witness another celestial collision, it's not going to be just a Spielberg production.
Next time, our worst nightmare will probably be quite real.
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Produced by the ThinkQuest Team 18220: Gerald Tan, Ryan Lim and Trishank Karthik
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