On October 2nd, the Japanese National Astronomical Observatory’s Subaru-Asahi Star Camera, located on the summit of Mount Maunakea in Hawaii, was the first to capture footage of a rare comet — the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Comet — as it passed near Earth. [BBC, October 3, 2024.]

The article stated that the comet had been discovered in January 2023 after the Tsuchinshan Observatory in China initially spotted it, and it was later independently detected by NASA’s Asteroid-Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). Thus, obviously, was its name chosen.

It is fascinating to contemplate any new discovery in space — black hole activity; a second, tiny “moon” orbiting Earth; or a water source on Mars. But this closing tidbit about Tsuchinshan-ATLAS particularly captured my attention:

“Scientists estimate the last time Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS visited our solar system was 80,000 years ago.”

And I want to know how they know that!

I mean, seriously. It’s not a tree; they can’t measure the rings. They can’t carbon-date it. They can’t check its birth certificate. There’s no DNA.

So what did they do . . . ask the little extraterrestrial riding on the comet’s tail? Stop it at the border to check its ID? Call its mother?

Or did some mad scientist simply come up with an indecipherable, unprovable mathematical equation?

I really do want to know how they know!

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/5/24