Ok, Comet Elenin worldend scenario, for the grinz

So there are all manner of pages and sites that are mentioning Comet Elenin with varying degress of sanity and woo-woo-ness.

Now, because all the "official experts" who have spent years "studying" things like "astronomy" cannot be trusted, real people, honest people, people with thinking minds and earnest hunches are bringing to light all manner of revelations about how we're all gonna git it.

So, because I really enjoy the apocryphal sci-fi type stuff, I will take a look at this from a "supposed disaster that has no scientific backing whatsoever as to how it will happen but because so many people are babbling about it there must be something to it" perspective and then try to propose a theory as to how it could happen, backed with only that minimal scientific knowledge that can be snared with a google search because, of course, there's no time!

So there is a comet that is coming into the solar system from faaaaaar away, Oort cloud far away it seems, and it will cross the orbital paths of several interior planets. Its projected trajectory will take it below the plane of the Earth's orbit, and then above the plane of Earth's orbit, but missing the Earth by many millions of miles.

OR WILL IT??? (have to have this, you see).

See, because it is going to show up *right around* the time that people are saying is time for the end of the world, they've concluded that this is the reason for said End: it will hit the earth. It is a big object, 2-3 miles across, extinction level impactor if so.

But how can it hit the earth if it in fact misses the earth by millions of miles???

Well, something must cause it to move!!

What?

hmmm.... how about s Solar flare, a coronal mass ejections (CME) of tremendous power aimed just so, that causes it to undergo some kind of transformation and deviation from it's course.

This is because the Sun is very active right about now! Yes, it is! These solar flares eject billions of tons of solar material at millions of miles an hour! Even NASA AGREES! (see, you have to have this, too: the thing that NASA really does agree with because, well, they're saying it).

OK, so a solar flare just knocks it silly. Then it becomes all kinds of unpredictable.

Oh NO! It swings past an interior planet. Which one? I don't know, how about Mercury. Or Venus? Or both? Anyway, swinging past that planet causes a "slingshot" type of effect that will put it on a boom boom course with Earth.

Also, this comet isn't leaving much of a tail. It is "wimpy" says NASA. What does that mean? It means it isn't giving off a lot of wispy tail. So that can only mean it is a big mean solid chunk of something, right. And now the solar flare plus the planets messing with it has aimed it right towards us.

Well, then what?

It will spiral in towards earth and then, like a tetherball around it's tetherpost, it's going to circle us a few times and scare everybody a whole bunch and all kinds of awful things will happen, and then WE'RE ALL GONNA GIT IT!!! Or, a significant number of us, anyway, because that's what most of the end of the world stories indicate.

So, there you go. How's that?