Graham Hancock on science: what the evidence says · JRE #1284
SUBJECT: SCIENCE
The short answer
Hancock claims there is a comet named 'Comet Enki,' 5-6 kilometers in diameter, that is a surviving fragment of the original giant comet behind the Taurid meteor stream. There is no comet officially designated "Comet Enki" in astronomical catalogs.
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
There's a comet up there called Comet Encke, which is part of the Taurid meteor stream. It's a large fragment of the original giant comet. Comet Encke has a diameter of, I don't know, five or six kilometers.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
There is no comet officially designated "Comet Enki" in astronomical catalogs. The recognized parent body of the Taurid meteor stream is comet 2P/Encke, a small periodic comet with a nucleus roughly 4.8 kilometers (about 3 miles) in diameter, a figure close to the 5-6 km Hancock cites, suggesting he is referring to Encke rather than a separately named body. Some astronomers (notably Victor Clube and Bill Napier in the 1980s-1990s) proposed that Encke and the wider Taurid Complex of asteroids and meteoroid streams descend from the breakup of a much larger ancestral comet tens of kilometers across; this "giant comet" hypothesis is a real but still debated minority position in the scientific literature, not settled consensus. No peer-reviewed source or catalog uses the name "Enki" for this or any comet; the term appears to be an informal label circulating among Younger Dryas impact hypothesis proponents, likely conflating the Mesopotamian deity Enki with the actual comet name Encke. The core factual elements, a Taurid-associated comet with a single-digit-kilometer diameter and a disputed giant-comet-breakup origin, are broadly consistent with 2P/Encke, but the specific name "Comet Enki" does not exist in mainstream astronomy.
Evidence sources 03 / EXHIBITS
- 2P/Encke - NASA ScienceTier 1