Ynna,
Photonic Systems Solutions Limited was a company of which I was director for a few years. It was struck off (i.e. closed by me) about two years ago.
Quote" Carefix's understanding of cometary phenomena is dubious to say the least. He gets extremely irate at SOTT whenever we post videos or articles about meteor fireballs that are visible for more than 1-3 seconds because, he says, anything longer than that is "physically impossible.""
This is not true. I am not sure of the source. I am a physicist with a PhD and a fist degree in atrophysics. My big problem with SoTT is they regularly post photos of aircraft contrails and call them comets. I have never said meteors cannot be visible for more than 3 seconds. Indeed Itys (which has now been seen five times to my knowledge) is usually visible for up to about 16 seconds (assuming clouds and other objects like mountains do not get in the way). I do not make cryptic comments. I call contrails, contrails. That is all. I do get irritated by SoTT for their continued posting of this garbage.
That I am the only source on Itys is not strictly true although only two people I know of realised that it is a quote: "...giant space rock". As distance clues are not obvious to the untrained it looks to them like a fairly harmless object. That is far from the truth.
Quote: "He kept leaving all these cryptic comments under SOTT articles on comets, fireballs, etc, so I asked him to point me to any sources on this 'Itys'. He sent me 'documentary evidence' in the form of a sketch of 'the mega-asteroid Itys' - as seen by him from Kent, England, in May 2007 (see attached)."
I guess this is Niall, I sent lots of Info and somebody (I presume Niall) declined to publish it on SoTT. One of the problems when it comes to dealing with people who see Itys is they do not like to come forward for fear of ridicule even the guy who shouted down the phone to me "It's a giant space rock". I was at the time trying to dissuade him from his view by way of a test. As it was I knew he spoke the truth - for involved reasons. Since trying to falsify in this manner he refuses to talk to me. He seems to think I don't believe him. The opposite is true. I was testing him to make sure he wasn't just some random nut-job. In any case falsification is central to the scientific method. You have to do this.
The problem with Itys now it appears in the conspiracy theory space as though it is a dreamed up whacko wind-up. That is in part my fault and the reason I have done this is:
1) In the hope that joe average might report sightings and now be able to tell the difference between a modest fireball and a mega-asteroid.
2) I got absolutely sick of the mindless gimboids in the NEO community who are completely blind to the possibility of there being such a thing as a NEO! These people are far more religious that the bible asteroid prophecy nuts and the Nibiru nut-jobs. Sounds strange but it is horribly true. (Note there is a possibility of a large dark star or giant planet disturbing the Oort cloud from time to time).
I think that practically it is now unlikely that our glorious and brainless leaders will be able to do anything about Itys. At one stage it was possible but now it is too late.
Anway, update. I recently found a report about an object that was seen last year over North America. I contacted the poster of the sighting who did not reply to my queries. The key thing is the head was reported as "black" and "dark" and the tail as smokey and white "smokey/white". Someone has posted the sketch I sent on this page somewhere. This is not only a dead giveaway it also turned up when I predicted it would be most likely (although 2015 was possible) which was originally in the fall of last year. Shame I missed it at first. The sighter is likely to be a good observer and honest.
Anyway, I now have enough data to do some calculations. First I worked out the deceleration of Itys each time it passes through the atmosphere as a function of size. From this I can estimate the minimum possible size and altitude. It turns out that (without checking excatly) Itys could actually be smaller than I first thought, perhaps as small as 3km diameter @ 35 miles altitude. This is seriously good news as it is not an Earth killer so there will be some survivors when the impact occurs. Itys travels much slower than the 30miles/sec of a solar system inbound comet. It is travelling about 10.5 miles a second so the energy relased on impact will be about a ninth of the energy released by a comet of a similar size.
The period I can now work out since the appearance of Itys in 2002 as: 4Y 9m, 4Y 3W, 3Y 2m 5d. Note the huge reduction in apparent period. This leaves me to believe the period will reduce by about a year this time around so I am now expecting the next closest approach (fly by) in the second half of next year, Aug/Sept. Unfortunately there is a significant chance of a lunar perturbation of the orbit and a consequent impact about then though my data is by no means hard enough to do other than estimate a 5% chance of the worst case.
When the endless beaurocracy that afflicts my life lets up enough I am going to begin work on the dynamic three body orbital mechanics that will enable me to better estimate an upper size limit.
There may be other stuff I need to correct so I may post more.
Note that no fireball has a live black tail which turns incandescent way behind the head. This is an asteroid of large size punching its way through the upper atmosphere.
