Newly Discovered Comet is Likely Interstellar Visitor

Capture Opportunity ?

I am sure it is prohibitively difficult but it would be interesting to attempt to crash it into, say a large asteroid or perhaps a moon of Jupiter, and see if we could beat Saturn for a neat set of rings. It would be great practice for defending Earth from other objects even though its closest predicted approach to Earth's orbit misses by a bunch. It would certainly be a great signpost for attracting aliens if we really want them to come to us. It is, of course, very dangerous to do but it would give us something really foreign to study for a very long time instead of watching it just zoom by and never seeing it again. Suppose it is mostly water, we might ultimately be able to make use of this resource. At the very least it would produce history's greatest light show. Just a wild thought since I truly am ....

thewildotter

Yes, I know we could probably not get anything solid out there to it in time. Perhaps we should build an accelerator on the moon so we could shoot at these things with beta or other charged particles as they pass. I wonder how much we could charge them up and how long the charge would remain attached. Another thought is to attempt to send something small and very fast after it in the anticipated direction it will leave, hoping to eventually catch it and put our chase vehicle into orbit around the comet kinda like chipping your pet. It seems that NASA's Juno probe made it up to 165,000 miles per hour and this comet is at 93,000 mph. We might have a chance.

<...C/2019 Q4 (Borisov)...> isn't a very pretty name. How about "'Oumuamua 2" instead?

Is Borisov Badenough ?

Being between 2 and 16 kilometers and traveling at 93,000 mph this is a very dangerous object. But since it has little chance of menacing us with a perihelion of 190 million miles(since Earth's orbit has a ~95 million mile aphelion) , I kind of agree that the moniker Borisov should be reserved for one which is, indeed, BadEnough.

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thewildotter