re how to get there was re comet in temporary orbit around jupiter in article apr stortek com pg sanitas stortek com paul gilmartin writes bill higgins beam jockey higgins fnalf fnal gov wrote while you re at it comet experts explain how a comet gets into jovian orbit to begin with there are non gravitational forces from heating and outgassing when a comet gets into the inner solar system don t forget the galilean satellites of jupiter my poor old physics intuition will be very surprised if these tiny masses sitting very close to jupiter play any role whatsoever in the problem or to put it more technically the extra volume they add to the phase space of possible capture trajectories is negligible jupiter is e kg while the galilean satellites are around e also as i said the few references that i ve looked at do not mention outgassing or breakup as important processes the important thing is a jupiter sun comet reverse slingshot that leads to a weakly jupiter bound orbit for the comet at least a temporary one bill higgins late at night she still doth haunt me fermilab dressed in garments soaked in brine bitnet higgins fnal bitnet though in life i used to hug her internet higgins fnal fnal gov now she s dead i draw the line span hepnet higgins after the tragedy clementine
