Should the first 3 interstellar comets be mentioned in OA?

[Lucida (Iota Piscium)]

should there be an article on the interstellar comet, I’m not sure it is mentioned yet because I have not read the articles in a while.

[stevebowers]

Not really. Interstellar 'comets' are actually just free-wandering interstellar objects, perhaps former members of extrasolar Oort clouds that have been perturbed out of position by interactions with other stars and are now moving around the galaxy independently. There are probably hundreds of them in the Solar System at any one moment, more if you consider smaller objects.

If we could collect a representative fraction of such objects and analyse them we might get an idea of the range of variation of elements and isotopes in different regions of the galaxy, but this would be a pretty confused signal. A very small fraction might contain some evidence of extrasolar life, but I doubt that we would be lucky enough to find evidence of this kind without examining millions, or billions, of such objects. Perhaps there is a field of scientific endeavour there waiting to be invented but chasing these relatively fast-moving objects would be expensive from an energy standpoint, and the rewards would probably be fairly limited. They are almost certainly mostly made of ices.

[Drashner1]

We currently have a short Comet article in the EG.

It seems like it would be fairly straightforward to do some or all of the following:

a) Add a sub-heading within the article for interstellar comets with an explanation that more or less mirrors what Steve has said here - or something similar if you have something in mind to write on this.

b) Add a historical aspect to the article that includes mention of historical sightings/names/social reactions to comets and a mention of the first 3 interstellar comets (which I'm assuming we've discovered in RL, leading to you mentioning here).

c) Add some brief mention of various uses of comets in OA (Haloists, Hiders, Orwoods, Deepwoods, terraforming, probably other things I'm not thinking of ATM) with links to the relevant articles.

In a nutshell, I don't think an article just on interstellar comets would be the best option, but expanding the existing article to include mention of them - and possibly other information on the subject of comets - seems like a good option IMHO.

My 2c worth,

Todd

[AstroChara]

should there be an article on the interstellar comet, I’m not sure it is mentioned yet because I have not read the articles in a while.

Aside from the other replies, I would want to ask why you think these should be done. Well, you should think about [why you think there should be one] before asking.

[Lucida (Iota Piscium)]

I probably should say an article on it, but I fell like there should be a paragraph on the comet page or something