Comet Elenin Shatters Near Earth

Those who argued strong and loud that comet Elenin would cause catastrophic natural events as it zipped past Earth were brought to silence on Sunday, October 16. Pieces of the object zipped past our planet without ushering in the apocalypse.

Some people were convinced that this object was the infamous planet Nibiru, heading towards Earth to put an end to all life here. Needless to say, that proved not to be the case. Regardless of how many times these scares are proven wrong, people always tend to associated themselves with such crazes.

Comet Elenin arrived next to Earth in pieces because it was heavily battered by a massive solar storm this August. The catastrophic event caused the comet to begin to crumble, and so only pieces of it arrived within 22 million miles (35.4 million kilometers) of our planet on Sunday.

At this point, what is left of the comet is heading towards deep space. This might seem like a relief to the comet, after suffering additional damage during a close encounter with the Sun on September 10.

“Now it's just a cloud of particles that will follow along in the comet's path and exit the solar system, and we won't see any of the particles for at least another 12 millennia,” expert Don Yeomans explains.

The astronomer holds an appointment with the Near-Earth Object Program Office, at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California. The organization kept track of the comet for a long time, and was in charge of determining whether its trajectory became dangerous or not.

Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin discovered this comet in December 2010, and determined that it's core was around 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 kilometers) in diameter. Such dimensions would have caused a lot of devastation had the intact comet struck Earth.

“It's just Mother Nature putting an end to another mediocre comet,” Yeomans adds, referring to the fact that about 2 percent of all comets meet their doom after coming too close to the Sun during their trips to the inner solar system.

A second space object flew past Earth on Monday, October 17. Dubbed 2009 TM8, the space rock moved extremely close, within 212,000 miles (341,000 kilometers) from our planet's surface. That is closer than the distance between Earth and its Moon, Space reports.