As the Taurid meteor shower passes Earth, pseudoscience is stirring – obscuring a possible real threat from space

With the Taurid meteor shower is now hitting the night sky worldwideKeep an eye fixed out for what might be a heavenly treat – you would possibly see shooting stars, possibly even Fireballsthe biggest and brightest meteors.

As a full moon begins to wane after November fifteenthDue to the waning moonlight, the sky becomes darker, making it easier to search out the meteors. However, one of the best meteor visibility will occur for the remaining of the month shortly before moonrise every night.

Beyond the sunshine show, there's something else that scientists and observers have long wondered about: the chance that there are larger chunks within the Taurid meteor showers, chunks the scale of boulders, buildings, and even mountains.

And if that's true, could certainly one of these monstrous Taurid objects collide with Earth? Could they wipe out a city or worse? Is it possible that this has already happened in some unspecified time in the future in our planet's past?

As a physicist I'm the one who researches the danger that comets and asteroids pose to Earth. I recognize that this can be a topic where pseudoscience often competes with actual science. So let's try to search out the road between fact and fiction.

Pigsty, glowing tails and shooting stars

Comet Encke is the so-called mother comet the Taurid meteors. It is comparatively small, just over 3 miles (nearly 5 kilometers) in diameter, and cruises out and in of Earth's orbit every 3.3 years.

When Encke moves, he sheds dust in all places, just like the Peanuts character Pig Pen. A meteor shower occurs when dust and debris light up as they enter Earth's atmosphere at high speeds. Eventually they disappear in a glowing cloud of steam with a glowing tail, creating the illusion of a “shooting star.”

But dust isn't all that breaks up the comet. The same goes for larger chunks, concerning the size of pebbles and stones. When they collide with the air, they create the much brighter fireballs that sometimes explode.

Doomsday shower

The “coherent catastrophism“The hypothesis suggests that Comet Encke was formed when an excellent larger comet disintegrated into pieces; Encke is the biggest piece that has been preserved. The hypothesis also suggests that other mountain-sized chunks also broke off and assembled right into a large swarm of fragments. If such a swarm exists, there may be a possibility that these large chunks could at some point hit Earth because it transits the swarm.

But simply because something is perhaps physically possible doesn't mean it exists. Mainstream astronomers have rejected probably the most catastrophic predictions of this theory. Among other things, scientists have never observed large concentrations of those mountain-sized objects.

Despite the shortage of evidence, researchers remain on the fringes of science have accepted the thought. They claim that Earth experienced a worldwide catastrophic swarm 12,900 years ago; The impacts, they are saying, caused firestorms, floods and abrupt climate change across the continent, resulting in mass extinctions of enormous mammals resembling: woolly mammothsand the disappearance of early Americans often known as the Clovis people.

The evidence for a catastrophic reason for these events, most of which didn’t occur, missing. Nevertheless, the thought found a big following and formed the premise for the favored television series by British writer Graham Hancock: “Ancient apocalypse.”

The Tunguska event

But even outlandish ideas can contain elements of truth, and there may be evidence that some objects—greater than just dust and debris, but smaller than Doomsday size—actually exist within the Taurid meteor shower and that Earth has already encountered them.

One clue comes from an event on June 30, 1908, when an enormous explosion within the sky knocked down thousands and thousands of trees in Siberia. That was the Tunguska event – a Air blast of an object that will be as much as 160 feet (about 50 meters) in diameter.

The collision several megatons of energy releasedwhich is roughly comparable to a big thermonuclear bomb. What happens is that this: the incoming object penetrates deep into the Earth's atmosphere and is slowed and heated by the dense air until it vaporizes and explodes.

Could this object have been a taurid? After all, the Taurids cross the Earth's orbit twice a yr – not only in autumn, but additionally in June.

Here's the evidence: First, the descriptions of the trajectory of the Tunguska air eruption reported by eyewitnesses match that of an object coming from the Tauride Stream.

Furthermore, the pattern of blast damage to the bottom under an air blast depends upon the trajectory of the exploding object. Supercomputer simulations show that the form of the surface explosion could be brought on by an exploding Tauride object matches the pattern of fallen trees in Tunguska.

Finally, through the Taurid meteor shower in 1975, people observed large fireballs – and previously placed seismometers on the moon by Apollo astronautsdiscovered seismic events on the lunar surface. Scientists interpreted these events as impacts probably brought on by the Taurid meteors.

In 2032 and 2036, the Taurid swarm – if it exists – is predicted to be closer to Earth than at any time since 1975. That could mean that the Moon, and maybe Earth, might be pelted again in those years.

It's time to search out out. Scientists can expand their astronomical surveys to search for Tunguska-sized objects within the places they’re more likely to be the following time they’re near us.

Most scientists remain skeptical that such a swarm exists, but it surely is the planetary defenders' job to research possible threats, even when the danger is low. After all, a Tunguska-sized object could potentially destroy a serious city and kill thousands and thousands of individuals; An accurate count of objects on a possible collision course is important.

Put aside doomsday scenarios and ancient apocalypses. The real and still open query is whether or not a Taurid swarm could carry more Tunguska-sized objects than would otherwise be expected. This would mean that we have now underestimated the danger of future air explosions.