Of Centaurs and Snowballs

Centaurs and scattered disk objects  (artist impression obv.) NASA/JPL

A new word in use for space phenomena which I recently stumbled across, is 'centaurs'.
Far from being mythical half-human, half horses, they are objects which exist beyond Neptune .
Think of snowballs with a dirty core of compacted ice - that's right, the kind that those bad kids used to throw.
Now scale them up to about 60 miles wide: they are Solar System bad kids - every now and again they veer off into a trajectory which brings the potential for collision with Earth.
The name refers to the shared qualities they exhibit, being a cross between asteroids and comets.
They become comets when their orbit is disturbed by gravity from one of the gas giant planets.
The rate of this tends to be low, however, say once every 60,000 years or so.

If you want a collision scenario, then you'd need to assess the scale of each one, and the likelihood of it heading to Earth, then more complex maths to deduce whether it would land directly on the home of your enemy- or at least the wicked witch.
Just saying...

...back to the centaurs.
The first such thing was discovered and named '2060 Chiron'  back in 1977.
NASA has gathered much new data on these objects from NEOWISE, giving a slightly clearer insight into these icy hybrids that lurk (mostly) between Neptune and Jupiter.

Beyond their erratic nature, and the fact that they have literally distant cousins (Scattered Disk Objects), there is not much to say, and they are certainly not half-human, half-horse: but it is in keeping with the habit of naming space phenomenon after classical figures: one example being the moons of Mars, named after two brothers from Greek mythology,  Deimos  and Phobos.
Not to be too flowery, they evoked dread and terror.
Suitably gnarly for satellites of Mars, the God of War.
Our entire solar system is a lesson in classical Greek Mythos.

Back to the centaurs .
Whilst I was researching these things, I input a query attempting to identify the first such object found and named .
I ended up with a reference to Harry Potters first encounter with centaurs in The Philosophers Stone.
Serendipity ?
Or do Google have a new algorithm sponsored by J K Rowling ?
Has her ubiquitious creation co-opted information on all mythical creatures?
Further delving revealed that yes, the tales of the young wizard do indeed involve many elements of creatures from folklore.
At first I was indignant that everything seemed ' branded' , or at least, tainted by association with the fictional world of Harry Potter.
Then I remembered the works of others including Robert Anton Wilson , Alan Moore and the late Terry Pratchett , where reality and fiction were often so finely intertwined that it was almost impossible to separate the two - infact it became undesirable, as the blend helped to create a more exciting reality, filled with fantastical potential.
It seems as though , with the availability of online knowledge and unchecked facts, there is immense potential for someone to live in an entirely constructed world, where the prevailing reality can be meshed with the idiosyncracies / glitches in the matrix which are readily available , whereas once they required actively seeking out.
Of course, this raises the question of consensus reality.
All of which leads me to a very odd place, and I'm not sure I should continue as it is far too deep and philosophical for the likes of myself.
Besides, it's way too early to consider quantum reality and parallel universes.
So I ' harrumph ', and sit back, removing my reading glasses and wondering what my original point was - oh yes, the potential for a 'centaur' to become an apocalyptic doom comet on a fiery mission to decimate Earth..
I sigh, and open my dusty, neglected book of folklore* instead.




* The excellent, exhaustive volume 'Lore Of The Land', by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson