LARK FREEPORT – An astronomer from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pag-asa) backed yesterday the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in dismissing reports that a comet discovered in December last year is headed towards the earth and would cause devastation.
The rumor, triggered by a YouTube video, has become so viral that NASA and even the Armagh Planetarium in Northern Ireland have reacted to it.
In a telephone interview with Punto, astronomer Jose Mendoza of Pag-Asa’s space sciences and astronomy unit, said comet Elenin is indeed on the path towards the earth, but said it would be 25 million kilometers away at its closest on Sept. 10.
In the Internet, space.com also cited “rumors about Elenin began spreading earlier this year. Its approach to Earth was blamed for shifting the Earth’s axis by 3 degrees in February, precipitating the Chile earthquake, then shifting the pole even more to trigger the Japan quake in March.”
The rumor was apparently triggered by a YouTube video showing Paul Begley, a preacher at Community Gospel Baptist Church in Knox, Indiana in the US as saying that the comet is “on its way and right in the middle of the Feast of the Trumpets, it is going to come through and get in between the Earth and the sun.”
“I’m here to tell you right now, we’re getting closer and closer and closer and closer to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ,” Begley said in the video.
Mendoza said the comet was discovered in the U.S. by Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin, after whom it was named, on Dec. 10, 2010, at International Scientific Optical Network’s robotic observatory in New Mexico in the US.
While Mendoza said the comet would be nearest earth on Sept. 10, Begley claimed Elenin would be closest on Oct. 16 which he noted to be the Feast of Tarbernacles in the Jewish calendar.
Mendoza, however, dismissed Begley as “one of those doomsayers” who link astronomical developments to the biblical Armaggedon.
Only recently, a network of radio stations in the US and other countries, led by 89-year-old Harold Camping, announced that the world would end last May 21. The failure of his prophecy only led to his ridicule.
“Elenin is not big enough to affect Earth and would be too far to be felt in any way in our planet,” he said. He noted that while Elenin’s surrounding gaseous elements measure about 100,000 kilometers, its solid nucleus is only about three to four kilometers.
“It will be visible to the naked eye starting on Sept. 5 and it’s definitely not going to be hazardous,” he said.
Even David Morrison, a planetary astronomer at NASA’s Ames Research Center and senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute reacted to the rumors, as he noted that “ignoring plate tectonics as the cause of earthquakes, they suggest that the comet exerted strong gravitational or electromagnetic effects on our planet.”
“Ironically, the inconspicuous nature of this comet plays into some of the conspiracy theories,” Morrison told Space.
“For people who are convinced the comet did cause the earthquakes, this proves that Elenin is not a comet at all, but a much more massive, and dangerous, interloper,” Morrison said in the NASA website.
This, even as astronomer Colin Johnston of the Armagh Planetarium in Northern Ireland also issued a statement said “Elenin will not hit earth.”
“I estimate the comet’s nucleus to have a mass of about 20 billion tons, which is vast in human terms, minute in astronomical terms.
Compared to the gravitational effects of the moon and other planets, Elenin’s effects will be immeasurably small,” he said.
