The dark secret of meteor showers.

Not to spoil a romantic summer night, but did you know that the Perseid meteor shower is not something as poetic and romantic as it seems, that it has a dark and disturbing secret, which is the cosmos' way of alerting us to something terrible

And the Perseid meteor showers, also known as tears of San Lorenzo, have just passed, it is one of the most important of the year and in 2024 the Perseids reached their point of maximum activity on the night of August 11 to 12, this year It coincided that the moon was half illuminated so its brightness made it a bit annoying to see the faintest meteors. Even so, astronomers appreciated the best conditions from midnight until dawn.

If you see shooting stars you can make wishes on them, but in reality they have a dark side, a terrible side, the shooting stars of the Perseids or almost all star showers are produced by the remains left in their wake by comets, although there are some rare case in which the remains are those of an asteroid, such as the case of the Geminid meteor shower.

The Perseids are the river of debris that Comet Swift-Tuttle left in its wake. If the Earth crosses this river of debris, it means that it also crosses the path of the Comet, so the Comet and our planet may end up colliding in a disastrous collision. , it's just a matter of time and maybe not too long.

This Comet has an average period of about 133 years, this is how long it takes to go around the Sun, in reality the period varies between 128 to 136 years, it entered that resonance about 1000 years ago and will surely leave it in a few thousand of more years, its last approach to our planet was in 1992 at that time better calculations could be made, the previous ones were from the 19th century and were taken independently by astronomers Lewis Swift on July 16, 1862 and by Horace Parnell Tuttleel on July 19. July 1862.

In 1992 astronomers discovered something disturbing, they discovered that the comet's passage through perihelion, its closest point to the Sun, was 17 days out of phase with the prediction, this indicated the possibility that the Comet would impact the Earth or the Moon on the 14th. August 2126, it would be Saturday the end of the world on a Saturday They could have waited until Monday.

In a publication from the University of Oxford in 1997, this comet was described as the most dangerous object known to humanity. Fortunately, later calculations and more modern and more powerful computers have ruled out that possibility of impact and have also ruled it out for the next 2000. years, although it will happen quite close and will be an impressive spectacle.

The new calculations show that in 2126 it will happen somewhat earlier than the date calculated at the beginning, its closest approach to the earth will be on August 5 at almost 23 million kilometers and on August 24, 2261 it will pass 13,700 1000 km from the earth, This does not mean that we are 100% out of danger, for two reasons, the first because we do not know what will happen in the long term and the second because this comet is one of the large ones, it is 26 kilometers in diameter, in case of impact with the earth it would destroy life completely.

It has been calculated that its destructive power would be 27 times greater than that of the asteroid that crashed in Chixulub Yucatan about 66 million years ago, putting an end to the era of non-avian dinosaurs and giant reptiles, it would be an extinction in colossal mass and I am Adding that we are talking about a comet, which unlike asteroids that are composed of rocks and or metal, Comets are basically large blocks of ice with some rocks but basically blocks of ice of different ices, not just ice of water.

As these ices approach the heat of the sun, they sublimate and expel materials, sometimes violently, which is why they end up creating that long and showy tail that they have in comets. For all this, it would not be surprising that in one of their approaches In the sun, Comet Swift-Tuttle ends up breaking up, it is something that usually happens to comets, even large ones because we know that it has already happened in the past with other cases.

In the case of Swift-Tuttle, which is a huge comet with a diameter of 26 km, we would have fragments of more than 1 km in diameter, in addition to a cloud of debris with diameters that would exceed tens of meters. All of these debris would follow the same trajectory as the comet. original, but with slight changes, changes that could be significant enough to place some of those fragments in the trajectory of our planet.

Moral, every year we will have the beautiful Perseid meteor shower and according to tradition if we see a shooting star we can make a wish, I will ask that humans develop a planetary defense plan to be able to deflect or destroy any comet or asteroid that may arise. a threat to the earth, what are you going to ask for?

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