Rare 4000-year comets can cause meteor showers on Earth
May 20, 2021
by SETI Institute
Comets that circle the Sun in very elongated orbits spread their debris so thin along their orbit or eject it out of the solar system altogether so that their meteor showers are hard to detect. From a new meteor shower survey published in the journal Icarus, researchers now report that they can detect showers from the debris in the path of comets that pass close to Earth orbit and are known to return as infrequently as once every 4,000 years.
"This creates a situational awareness for potentially hazardous comets that were last near Earth orbit as far back as 2,000 BC," said meteor astronomer and lead author Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute.
