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Swift-Tuttle comet and Kiuchi to meet in approximately 1,944,800,000 km.
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July 1988 An idea for comet discovery comes while fly fishing.
"I wanted to understand the constitution of the universe, but I kept running into obstacles. One day, I was fly fishing in a river with a friend. The natural flow caused an eddy in one part of the river. In the same place, bull trout were poking their heads out of the water. Obviously, they chose that place because they knew the bait would drift there. Wondering how they knew that, I noticed my fly moving toward the eddy, and then it hit. Comets move in the same way! From then on, I gazed at the way the fly moved to the eddy before sinking. If I adopt the bull trout's logic to star-gazing, I should be able to work out where a comet will drift." "The flow of the river was just like a solar system. I went home and immediately drew a diagram. After a few calculations, I devised my own way to calculate the method of discovering comets." | |