For newbies & normies: The danger of extrapolation

Comets are supposed to be remnants of the early solar system.

Hale-Bopp has an orbital period of 2534 yrs. give or take. Given that the earth is ~4.5B yrs. old we can conclude that Hale-Bopp has made at least 1775848 passes by the sun. Lets be conservative and say 1M to allow for some variation and to make the math a bit easier. The comet lost ~ 1.5% of 1% of its mass during it's last pass by the sun. Which means it is now (1-0.00015)^(1e6)=7.09482051203e-66 times its original mass which is estimated at 1.3x10^16 kg. So its original mass would have been about 1.8e+81 kg. Now that's a big number so lets compare it to something else that is really big, like the sun. The mass of the sun is 1.989x10^30 kg. So Hale-Bopp originally weighed 9e+50 times the weight of the sun. That's a 9 with 50 zeros after it! (Go ahead and check the numbers, they're real. All high school level math.)

So the next time you see someone making claims based on the extrapolation of numbers, even approximately correct ones, remember Hale-Bopp. BTW in case you missed the point, if the above were true we (and the sun) would all be orbiting Hale-Bopp.

(reposted from the heel of lb)