From the wiki on Encke,
"Comet Encke is believed to be the originator of several related meteor showers known as the Taurids (which are encountered as the Northern and Southern Taurids across November, and the Beta Taurids in late June and early July).[29] A shower has similarly been reported affecting Mercury".
Italics mine.
I'm very surprised we don't have sufficient data to definitively pin the origin of meteor showers. There's only so many degrees of freedom. I'd guess maybe the problem is the objects in the shower are too small to detect before entry, and by the time they enter, their dynamics are too messed up by breaking apart to retrace their pre-entry trajectory? But we also have the LHC... We're pretty good at scattering reconstruction. I know it's not exactly the same, but it's surprising this isn't solved.
Edit- As an aside, for "Tunguska" sized meteors, how harmful would they be if they landed only with terminal earth velocity? I'm guessing relatively safe(1)? It seems possible we could mess with their orbits enough if we strapped rockets to them to make them approach earth at specified trajectories to land in Siberia or something and mine them. Or rail guns from the moon to redirect them? (I just watched the expanse lol). I know there's at least one startup trying to mine asteroids, but I think they want to do it in space. Maybe that makes more sense. Still, I assume they must be planning on dropping smaller mined+maybe partially refined chunks down to earth in a similar fashion.
Maybe controlling/predicting trajectories is harder than I thought though.
(1) Asked Gemini real quick and it estimates approximately 200 times weaker if Tunguska "dropped" from top of atmosphere relative to the actual blast. But I know Gemini is bad at math, so...
From the wiki on Encke, "Comet Encke is believed to be the originator of several related meteor showers known as the Taurids (which are encountered as the Northern and Southern Taurids across November, and the Beta Taurids in late June and early July).[29] A shower has similarly been reported affecting Mercury". Italics mine.
I'm very surprised we don't have sufficient data to definitively pin the origin of meteor showers. There's only so many degrees of freedom. I'd guess maybe the problem is the objects in the shower are too small to detect before entry, and by the time they enter, their dynamics are too messed up by breaking apart to retrace their pre-entry trajectory? But we also have the LHC... We're pretty good at scattering reconstruction. I know it's not exactly the same, but it's surprising this isn't solved.
Edit- As an aside, for "Tunguska" sized meteors, how harmful would they be if they landed only with terminal earth velocity? I'm guessing relatively safe(1)? It seems possible we could mess with their orbits enough if we strapped rockets to them to make them approach earth at specified trajectories to land in Siberia or something and mine them. Or rail guns from the moon to redirect them? (I just watched the expanse lol). I know there's at least one startup trying to mine asteroids, but I think they want to do it in space. Maybe that makes more sense. Still, I assume they must be planning on dropping smaller mined+maybe partially refined chunks down to earth in a similar fashion.
Maybe controlling/predicting trajectories is harder than I thought though.
(1) Asked Gemini real quick and it estimates approximately 200 times weaker if Tunguska "dropped" from top of atmosphere relative to the actual blast. But I know Gemini is bad at math, so...