Questions about the Nightfall Asteroid - 08/04/09 06:33 PM
Here's one for the sciency types. I always wondered why the Nightfall asteroid was discovered so late - there were only a few days (it seemed) to decide on some plan. (Of course, I'm not getting into dramatic tension for the show - I'm thinking about the L&C world.)
Aren't there usually tons of people who are amateur astronomers? And don't they spend a lot of time staring up at the sky through their telescopes, because they like to? Then why didn't they notice Nightfall?
I'm meandering my way through writing a fic where this topic is mentioned in passing, so I need some plausible-sounding reasons. Things I've come up with:
1) The asteroid is of very low reflectivity and nobody can see it against the black nighttime sky.
2) The space station (remember that one from the Pilot episode?) is in a geosynchronous orbit above the Earth. It just so happens that the space station blocks everyone's view of Nightfall and its trajectory. But I can't help thinking that this reason won't work, although I don't understand enough of orbital mechanics to know why.
And, by the way, is the discovery of Nightfall because it caused a sudden solar eclipse (that they showed in the episode) plausible at all? I thought, to have an eclipse, the asteroid would have to be between us and the sun, therefore by definition less than one astronomical unit away. Would that distance take days to cross, as they showed in the episode? And if the asteroid is between us and the Sun, why isn't it attracted to the Sun's much larger gravitational influence instead of the puny Earth gravitational field?
And how fast would Nightfall be traveling, anyway? If it's in a cometary orbit, wouldn't it be traveling faster as it approaches Earth/the Sun?
And, if F=ma, and Clark needs a lot of force to make up for the massive mass and presumably very fast acceleration of the asteroid, wouldn't just slamming into it like he did impart a random vector to the fragments? Was he counting on the fact that a large enough slam into the asteroid would knock it (or its fragments) off path so much that would be out of the Earth's gravitational influence? Is that possible?
And where did Nightfall come from? Wikipedia (in my two seconds of research, since I'm really too lazy to work at it - I'd rather ask the FoLCs) says that the asteroids are rock and metal, but objects from the Kuiper Belt tend to be composed largely of frozen volatiles.
So if Nightfall were from the Kuiper Belt, and if it were made of frozen volatiles, wouldn't it act like a comet and have a large flaming tail (from sublimation of the volatiles) as it approached the Sun?
And if it were from the Kuiper Belt, how long do you think it would take to reach the inner Solar System? And if it's from the asteroid belt, why did it suddenly start moving towards Earth? (Actually, I do have a reason for that in my fic, but I'd be interested in what people have to say.)
I started trying to think of plausible, watertight explanations for Nightfall and the things that happened in the episode, and I just can't. Part of that is certainly my lack of physics and astronomical knowledge, so if anyone has any thoughts, I'd certainly appreciate them.
Aren't there usually tons of people who are amateur astronomers? And don't they spend a lot of time staring up at the sky through their telescopes, because they like to? Then why didn't they notice Nightfall?
I'm meandering my way through writing a fic where this topic is mentioned in passing, so I need some plausible-sounding reasons. Things I've come up with:
1) The asteroid is of very low reflectivity and nobody can see it against the black nighttime sky.
2) The space station (remember that one from the Pilot episode?) is in a geosynchronous orbit above the Earth. It just so happens that the space station blocks everyone's view of Nightfall and its trajectory. But I can't help thinking that this reason won't work, although I don't understand enough of orbital mechanics to know why.
And, by the way, is the discovery of Nightfall because it caused a sudden solar eclipse (that they showed in the episode) plausible at all? I thought, to have an eclipse, the asteroid would have to be between us and the sun, therefore by definition less than one astronomical unit away. Would that distance take days to cross, as they showed in the episode? And if the asteroid is between us and the Sun, why isn't it attracted to the Sun's much larger gravitational influence instead of the puny Earth gravitational field?
And how fast would Nightfall be traveling, anyway? If it's in a cometary orbit, wouldn't it be traveling faster as it approaches Earth/the Sun?
And, if F=ma, and Clark needs a lot of force to make up for the massive mass and presumably very fast acceleration of the asteroid, wouldn't just slamming into it like he did impart a random vector to the fragments? Was he counting on the fact that a large enough slam into the asteroid would knock it (or its fragments) off path so much that would be out of the Earth's gravitational influence? Is that possible?
And where did Nightfall come from? Wikipedia (in my two seconds of research, since I'm really too lazy to work at it - I'd rather ask the FoLCs) says that the asteroids are rock and metal, but objects from the Kuiper Belt tend to be composed largely of frozen volatiles.
So if Nightfall were from the Kuiper Belt, and if it were made of frozen volatiles, wouldn't it act like a comet and have a large flaming tail (from sublimation of the volatiles) as it approached the Sun?
And if it were from the Kuiper Belt, how long do you think it would take to reach the inner Solar System? And if it's from the asteroid belt, why did it suddenly start moving towards Earth? (Actually, I do have a reason for that in my fic, but I'd be interested in what people have to say.)
I started trying to think of plausible, watertight explanations for Nightfall and the things that happened in the episode, and I just can't. Part of that is certainly my lack of physics and astronomical knowledge, so if anyone has any thoughts, I'd certainly appreciate them.