Ages of the Taurid and Perseid Meteor Showers

-- | June 11, 2012

Question: Hi, I have a quick question about the meteor showers known as the Taurids and Perseids: would they have been visible to an observer on Earth in around 4000 BCE? Or are they a more recent phenomenon?

Many thanks, Rob.

Answer: Let’s look at the evidence for the age of each of these meteor showers:

Taurids: The Taurids are an annual meteor shower associated with comet Encke. According to meteorshowersonline.com:

The origin of the Taurids was reexamined by Whipple and S. Hamid during 1950. They calculated the effects of secular perturbations by Jupiter on the orbital inclination and longitude of perihelion of nine photographic meteor orbits and found the orbital planes of four of the meteors to coincide with that of comet Encke 4700 years ago. Three other orbits coincided with one another, but not with comet Encke 1500 years ago. The authors theorized “that the Taurid streams were formed chiefly by a violent ejection of material from Encke’s Comet some 4700 years ago, but also by another ejection some 1500 years ago, from a body moving in an orbit of similar shape and longitude of perihelion but somewhat greater aphelion distance….” It was suggested that this unknown body had separated from Encke some time in the past.

So, the evidence for the Taurid meteor stream dates back to about 2000 BCE.

Perseids: The Perseids are an annual meteor shower associated with comet Swift-Tuttle. Again, from meteorshowersonline.com

The earliest record of Perseid activity comes from the Chinese annals, where it is said that in 36 AD “more than 100 meteors flew thither in the morning.” Numerous references appear in Chinese, Japanese and Korean records throughout the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, but only sporadic references are found between the 12th and 19th centuries, inclusive. Nevertheless, August has long had a reputation for an abundance of meteors. The Perseids have been referred to as the “tears of St. Lawrence”, since meteors seemed to be in abundance during the festival of that saint in Italy on August 10th; however, credit for the discovery of the shower’s annual appearance is given to Adolphe Quételet (Brussels, Belgium), who, in 1835, reported that there was a shower occurring in August that emanated from the constellation Perseus.

So, there is evidence for the existence of the Perseids to about 0 BCE.

Now, as both of these meteor showers are associated with periodic comets which have been observed for many centuries, one might suggest that these meteor showers have been visible for centuries. In theory, this seems plausible, but there are no observations to support this fact.

So, to borrow from MythBusters, it seems plausible that the Taurid and Perseid meteor showers could have been observed in 4000 BCE.

Jeff Mangum

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