Originally posted by BlackGuardXIII
Recently, an asteroid was sighted that came closer to us than the moon. If I recall it was large enough to do some serious damage. The scary part is that they spotted it two weeks after it passed by... and then they lost it again. A meteorite 5 miles across would cause extinctions, even if it hit in the most favourable location, like the south pacific. Imagine, when it hit the ocean floor, half of it would still be above water.

Now reading things like this makes you wonder why we have not got more people studying this. We know they have hit us in the past we get little one all the times and we know we have been hit by some big ones in the past, we have found the craters to prove it but yet they, our governments, ignore it like it will not happen.

Originally posted by defcon5
Don’t sweat it too much you only have a 1 in 6000 chance of dying from an asteroid….

i bet the Dinosaurs thought they was lucky then when the big one hit them it must been like 1 in 6000 lol

1 in 6000 means nothing really if you think about it, it just means its fairly rare but dont mean it never going to happen, as it could happen any day onwards from now.


[edit on 1-1-2006 by blobby]

sounds like a job for Bruce Willis




[edit on 1-1-2006 by Lamagraa]

Originally posted by goose
Now reading things like this makes you wonder why we have not got more people studying this. We know they have hit us in the past we get little one all the times and we know we have been hit by some big ones in the past, we have found the craters to prove it but yet they, our governments, ignore it like it will not happen.

I think that they pretty much know that there is not a whole heck of a lot we can do if we find one heading our way at the moment. The idea of blowing one up is not really that viable, some of them are to dense, others are nothing more then piles of rock that would absorb the damage and keep on coming. Altering the trajectory is not viable, since we cannot create a huge shockwave in a vacuum. Most of the other ideas are even less feasible and stand just as big of a chance of accidentally altering the orbit of a NEO that would have barely missed us into one that would hit. Besides what better chance they ever going to have of thinning the population out some?


Here look at what Davenman is talking about:

Originally posted by davenman
This comet is in the process of breaking up. The main portion of the comet is expect to come no closer than 15 million miles, but some of the fragments are expected to pass within 5 million miles. That is not what we would consider a close call in astronomical terms, but

Considering this is spread out over millions of miles with chunks of all different sizes and densities, how would you go about stopping something like this. Even if you managed to send up 20 shuttle missions to break up the largest 20 chunks (and there could be hundreds of large chunks), it would still hit the earth like a shotgun blast.

Defcon,

You are obviously interested in prophecy. In the instance of this comet, consider the possibility of the Sun appearins as through black sackcloth(burlap) as this comet is breaking up and will pass between the Earth and Sun in May of 2022. All of those broken pieces of the comet peppered across millions of miles of space blocking out enough sunlight to give the appearance of black sackcloth. The moon would turn blood red because of the light of the Sun being refracted through the Ice debris of the comet.

Read Revelation Chapter 6 thru 8 and see what you think.

The panic that would ensue would cause men to kill one another over food, supplies, weapons, shelter, etc. Men would hide in the caverns of the Earth. Food would sell at a premium because a meteor storm like what is described would destroy much of the world's crops.

Something to think about....

Just out of curiosity, if we spotted an metor soon enough say it was 6 months away. Theoretically do we think it would be possible to pull an armageddon like stunt... If anyone else recalls the movie armageddon they had to plant bombs (i think) on a metor to bloww it up... could we like drive by missel it or just launch a nuke at it... If it rained in smaller peices it would do much less but more widespread damage...

Originally posted by Freedom_for_sum

Let's see; I'll be 64 years old. Might as well party hardy until then cuz it doesn't look good.

Well dont party too hard,if it is the big one that you worry it could be,you may get cancer or die of liver desease a week before the big event.Then you`d be doing this

Imo i`d rather be a part of or watch history take place and die,rather than die by some common way.

Originally posted by davenman All of those broken pieces of the comet peppered across millions of miles of space blocking out enough sunlight to give the appearance of black sackcloth. The moon would turn blood red because of the light of the Sun being refracted through the Ice debris of the comet.

Stop for a moment and consider the relative size of things.

The volume of the comet (the amount of "stuff" in the comet's tail AND the comet itself) is pretty small. There's less "stuff" in a comet and tail than there is in the moon. If you ran a giant collection unit into space and gobbled up the comet, you would find that there's about as much matter in the comet as there is in Houston's Astrodome Stadium.

Now... suppose for a minute that we filled Houston's Astrodome to the brim with styrofoam cups (indulge me for a moment) and that we laid them out in a lattice with one cup every thousand square yards or so... and sent it floating (weather balloons, maybe) into the sky.

How much would it dim the sun's light?

The answer is that it wouldn't.

We pass through the tail rubble of comets every year... several times, in fact. These closely packed fragments produce wonderful meteor showers but don't dim the light of the sun or the moon.

Also -- should point out that these comets and asteroids are part of the solar system and have been lurking around Earth and the sun for about 10 billion years. They didn't "suddenly" show up... we have better telescopes and instruments so that we can see them.

In fact, since I got a telescope for Christmas, I'll be one of the ones out there looking at the comet in April!

www.exodus2006.com

If your scared to die this may make you pee your pants, especially if your 19 and read about the largest draft in history in 2006 for WWlll. yep im screwed.

Are these bible codes true? Well Ive seen a few come true so Im not selling them short.

One more thing, if you think the bible codes will come true then dont spaz out over 2012 because you will die when yellowstone erups and blacks out the sun in 2009. Or you will die like me in 2007 in WWlll. So dont you fell better now knowing you have nothing to worry about in 2012.

Byrd,

I see what you're getting at and you may very well be right. I honestly hope you are. As for the composition of comets, that's under heavy investigation by NASA these days. They are believe to be composed of iron, ice and various rock compounds.

On the issue that you bring up regarding the content of the comet, a one kilometer comet would not concern me as much as a 100 kilometer comet or more. Size is of importance in this regard. I have not been able to ascertain the size of this comet yet. If you find any such information, I think we'd all be interested to know.



GPS,

I like your perspective.



Freedom,

The asteroid that you are pointing out is a reasonably small one...about 20-30 meters diameter from my understanding. The worst that something that size would do would be something like the crater in Arizona with total annihilation about 5 miles from impact and almost no damage 100 miles from impact. Of course the result in the ocean would be a tsunami, the size of which would be considerably less than the tsunami in India last year unless you are near to the impact. That object in particular has not been tracked well enough to know whether it will pass 5 million miles or 2500 miles from earth. In spacial terms that's nearly a shot in the dark. I'm sure they'll be watching for it the next time it passes within radar range.

If the composition of that asteroid is not solid, then it might very well break up and disintegrate on entry to the Earth's atmosphere.

With an object of that size, nukes might be an option.

The speed of an object has much to do with its' survival to impact. The faster an object is going, the more likely it will break up. Slower objects stand a better chance of making impact with Earth. This object would be traveling fairly fast in relation to Earth and wouldn't hold together well upon entry to Earth's atmosphere unless it is very solid. Most asteroids are not believed to be very solid.



InspiringYouth,

The size of an object and it's probability for impact are the keys. If an object were 5 kilometers in diameter and probability was certain, then you could expect that every resource in the world would be used. If the object is 20 meters as explained above, then governments would probably evacuate the expected impact zone at the right time and hope for minimal damage.

Keep in mind that every day there are objects the size of a nickle burning up on entry. Many times a year there are auto to bus sized objects entering or deflecting off of the earths atmosphere. Some impact or deflect, but most burn up. The larger the mass of the object, the less frequent the encounter at near to equal ratio. That is a 10 times larger mass approaches us about 10 times less frequently.

There are some interesting video clips at www.AreaDownload.com under the heading of UFO where you can see videos of meteors in our atmosphere. Some of those videos were filmed from the space station.

These are not quotes, but I have derived much of my understanding from this book "Rain of Iron and Ice" by John S Lewis. Lewis' book covers a great deal of information on meteors of all sizes. He dispells some popular notions that our chances of being hit by a celestial object are almost nil. There was anoter post here where someone heard that our chances are 1 in 6000 of dying from the impact of a meteor. Keep in mind that that covers a person's entire lifetime and includes objects that are smaller than a baseball on impact all the way up to those Earth destroying sizes.

I have to say that it's real interesting to learn about these things. There are far more objects orbiting our sun than we ever imagined.

Originally posted by davenman
Freedom,

The asteroid that you are pointing out is a reasonably small one...about 20-30 meters diameter from my understanding. The worst that something that size would do would be something like the crater in Arizona with total annihilation about 5 miles from impact and almost no damage 100 miles from impact.

I actually pointed out a few asteroids.

I am no expert on the subject matter; but what I do know is that NASA has developed this website to present those NEO's they deem to be a potential hazard I have no idea what this means.

Originally posted by davenman
That object in particular has not been tracked well enough to know whether it will pass 5 million miles or 2500 miles from earth. In spacial terms that's nearly a shot in the dark. I'm sure they'll be watching for it the next time it passes within radar range.

The error, by their admission, is significant enough that the asteroids in question could be further away from Earth (not by 5 million miles though) or they could score a direct hit; they don't know for certain. What they do know is that these NEO's present a greater risk for collision that other NEO's. And they don't use radar to determine this. They use visual telescopes.

Originally posted by davenman
The speed of an object has much to do with its' survival to impact. The faster an object is going, the more likely it will break up. Slower objects stand a better chance of making impact with Earth. This object would be traveling fairly fast in relation to Earth and wouldn't hold together well upon entry to Earth's atmosphere unless it is very solid. Most asteroids are not believed to be very solid.

I think it's more correct to say larger objects stand a better chance of impact; though I'm sure your correct that speed does play some role. NASA does provide velocity info in the tables. Unfortunately, they don't provide their size; which I think is strange.

Asteroids, BTW, are all solid rock. It is comets that are considered to be relatively viscous and which are more likely to break up.

As far as using Nukes to blow up a NEO: I remember seeing a program (probably Discover) where it stated this wasn't the best option as its disintigration might cause a shower of relatively smaller debris to rain down causing a wider swath of damage.

[edit on 2-1-2006 by Freedom_for_sum]

I am no expert on the subject matter; but what I do know is that NASA has developed this website to present those NEO's they deem to be a potential hazard I have no idea what this means.

Freedom,

You are correct here. You are in error in your interpretation of what you found on NASA's site. I'm not wanting to defend them in any way since I'm pretty sure that they'd hide the truth if they thought it would cause a panic.

The error, by their admission, is significant enough that the asteroids in question could be further away from Earth (not by 5 million miles though) or they could score a direct hit; they don't know for certain. What they do know is that these NEO's present a greater risk for collision that other NEO's. And they don't use radar to determine this. They use visual telescopes.

When object are found, they need 3 good coordinates that are far enough apart to determine its' speed and trajectory. If they are only able to get 2 poor coordinates before it excapes their field of view, then they calculate using what they have and calculate their range of error. The .00002 AU from Earth that you pointed out was on one extreme of their margin for error.

You are correct that when they leave a margin for error, they don't know for certain and they could be on a collision course for Earth.

Also, they do use radar to find the NEOs. I don't remember where, but I read about the use of dopplar radar to find and pinpoint locations and speeds of asteroids. This is one of the things helping them to find so many NEOs these days, many of which are millions of miles away and not much bigger than your house.

You mentioned an issue of NASA not providing a size. They do, but in astronomical terms. They give it in form of Absolute Magnitude. The larger the number of magnitude, the smaller the object is. For instance, a 24 magnitude object is somewhere around 40-80 meters diameter, a 26 magnitude is about 15-30 meters, a 20 magnitude would be about 250-500 meters. Don't confuse absolute magnitude with apparent magnitude.

I made an error in terminology. When I spoke of how solid an asteroid is, I meant more in regards to its' composition. An asteroid made of solid nickel would withstand a tremendous amount of heat and pressure(speed) on entry to Earth's atmosphere. However, most asteroids are made up of much less resiliant and dense materials and therefore disintegrate when they impact with Earth's atmosphere. Most meteor fragments that are found on Earth are of the more resiliant materials...thus they made it all the way to ground level in one or two or three pieces.

Yes. Using nukes on asteroids larger than 50 meters would probably not be a good idea unless used in specific ways.

With today's ability to locate small NEOs, we will probably be able to predict and watch a few fireballs in the next 20 years. NASA will undoubtedly find some less than 20 meters on an impact course with Earth.