asteroid/comet impact - would 'they' tell us?

Originally posted by razorbackhater
if i recall correctly there was an asteroid that past the earth recently that could of had wiped us out, problem is no one even knew about it until it had past.

The asteroid you are talking about is probably the one named 2004 AS1. The closest to Earth that asteroid arrived was about 8-12 million miles. So, there was a big mis-calculation.

There are no formal procedures for dealing with an imminent asteroid impact as far as my knowledge is concerned. I have read that in the event astronomers do detect something on an Earth trajectory, they are to now call Lindley Johnson, NASA's Near Earth Object Observation Program Scientist. Lindley Johnson then has access to NASA's chief, Sean O'Keefe, who is a phone call away from the President of the United States. It would then be up to the President to notify his people and the world.

By what I have read, most likely we would find out from the President of the United States that we are in imminent danger if an asteroid was heading our way.

Right now, people should be concerned with St. Michael (4179 Toutatis) asteroid, predicted to miss Earth by 963,000 miles.

In any event of an asteroid being on an Earth trajectory, the onus is on the President to notify and implement emergency procedures.

Maybe all the Aussie Bloke thing is a Government agent gauging our response to what is about to occur in September?

Link

Link

St. Michael

Capitalism (and the control that the government gets because of it) does not work if people do not bother going to work when they do not see the point in saving money for the future and paying their bills when there is going to be no future. Our government will never let us know if they can help it, however there are always outside sources of information that one can aquire.

ouizel, to tell you the truth, i dont even have a scope of my own, i am not an amateur. BUT i use the observatories of universities around the countrywhen i give lectures.
You are welcome to also. Many of these universities have open viewing nights where you can actually take control of a massive scope. That is one reason that the public would know. Its actually kind of a joke that the public would know before the government.

Secondly, when i did have a scope it was a 25 inch newtonian. Why would i need that now? So i sold it. To tell you the truth though, i dont know why you are worrying about any of this , do you see me building bomb shelters and stocking up on cyanide capsules?....no

if there are anymore questions on astronomy i would be very happy to answer them!

Well, Encino, you may well be right. There are a lot of doomcryers out there just looking for a reason to drop everything and run screaming into the streets.

I might like to chat with you about astronomy sometime, though. (If I haven't irritated you too much, that is )

June 8 is the day the supposed dust cloud blocks the sun, surely something of this magnitude would be seen.

Dont be ridiculous, you didnt irritate me. Im going down the shore for the weekend starting tomorrow. Give me a U2U if you want. Otherwise see you tuesday.

Encino, What do you make of this dust cloud "theory" "prediction"
if you have heard of it I will try to find the post.


From www.bushcountry.org...

June 8-9 Dust Cloud begins to reach the Earth and darkening of the skies.
June 18-20 1st impact
June 24-25 2nd impact
June 27-28 3rd impact of the "anomaly"

(edit) added link

[Edited on 2-6-2004 by rcoreyn]

Originally posted by IMMORTAL

Originally posted by razorbackhater
Right now, people should be concerned with St. Michael (4179 Toutatis) asteroid, predicted to miss Earth by 963,000 miles.



Link

Link

St. Michael

OK...that just freaked me out...(new here so never even heard about the St. Michael Astroid) That last link popped up with the date Sept 29th 2004....why did it freak me out...My son MICHAEL, his birthday is Sept 29th...He'll be 6 this yr...

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

copernico.dm.unipi.it...

Virtual Impactors, Target Solution Lost.

1998 OX4
2004-Sep-14 10:22 < 00:01

Up to date info on NeoDys Risk page (Dynamic Site constantly updated) makes no mention of 1998 OX4 for the September Arrival:

Universita' di Pisa
Centro Serra, Italy:
131.114.72.13...

Mirror in Spain:
unicorn.eis.uva.es...

Hope that clears things up.


[edit on 5-6-2004 by 1998OX4]

Well for all you guys worried about getting hit by asteroids, I think the next few days will be safe. I don't believe the world's G8 leaders would be meeting on an island if they thought a huge tidal wave was about to hit. However a large military exercise out in the ocean would be a good cover story to beef up security from potential threats to a big meeting on an island. Just my thoughts if you want to feel better.

Would the government tell us if one was coming? I think a better question would be
would the government know if one was coming at all and would they know for sure that it was going to hit? If it was massive I think they have a good chance of knowing, if it was a relatively small object, they might not know but the small objects tend to do alot less damage. I don't think the world will end tomorrow or the next day.

Yes, I agree, I think the big danger is from an unnoticed smaller asteroid with the potential to knock out a city than a larger one which is more likely to be spotted early on.

In the event of an approaching extinction-level 'roid it will be interesting to see if the major world powers can put aside their differences and work together to defeat a problem which could ultimately wipe-out humanity.

Originally posted by ENCINO MAN
and stocking up on cyanide capsules?....no

Hey...you just need one to finish the job.

We'd all know before the Govt would know...there to busy #in around wit Mars to notice anything coming our way.

Well, would the govt. tell? No, Never.... They would not be smart if they did. If there was an asteroid that was going to wipe out humnity, then they would not notify anyone till just before they took cover..... Why? Well, that would be simple, there would not be enough military and police to control the major panick that would take off. They would just debunk stories. If it became obvious that the asteroid would hit, then they would make the damage sound minimal. Once the asteroid cam very close and just before the event, then and only then would you be notified to the extent. This would cause the least amount of chaos.

Now, as for univerities letting people use the scopes, that is all great and good, but unless someone was looking at this small object just correctly in the exact point of sky, you would not notice anything. Just a one in a billion lucky guess. These is no way to scan the whole earths sky eficiently.
Why did NASA not know (or the rest of the world) as that matter of the asteroid that was Found on March 15th, passed to the public on the 17th and it past the earth on the 18th of this year. There is your proof it would be impossible to know. I have previous given the address, but here it is again.... neo.jpl.nasa.gov... "Recently Discovered Near-Earth Asteroid Makes Record-breaking Approach to Earth "

So, as you can see, it was not known .... NASA said... "A small near-Earth asteroid (NEA), discovered Monday night by the NASA-funded LINEAR asteroid survey, will make the closest approach to Earth ever recorded." I know EncinoMan sais that it was tracked already, but ... Not according to NASA.

I am not saying either way what I think, but this is the expected scenario from my guess. If it happens, it happens... Nothing to do about it. If you run into an underground shelter anyways, it will not matter much, with all the cosmic dust and earth particles in the upper atmosphere, the next iceage will come. Just make sure you stock plenty of Vodka for all the Ice you will have..

[edit on 7-6-2004 by JCMinJapan]

[edit on 7-6-2004 by JCMinJapan]

Here's a short list of things the Government "Knew About" prior to the event. (Yeah-right)

The Assassination of Prince Ferdanand (Which led up to WWI)

Pearl Harbor

The Japanese pulling out of Korea, and the consequential Communist overthrow of the North.

The Challenger Disaster

911 Attack

...And you want to know if they'd tell us about an imminent Astroid strike? (Actually, I'm firing up a few conspiracy buffs)

[edit on 10-6-2004 by Toelint]

Apparently, the number of known "NEA"'s (near earth asteroids) has greatly increased in the last 2 decades according to this chart from NASA.





The blue area shows all near-Earth asteroids while the red area shows only large near-Earth asteroids. In this context, "large" is defined as an asteroid having an absolute magnitude (H) of 18.0 or brighter which roughly corresponds to diameters of 1 km or larger.




The charts below show the number of NEA's discovered by each of the predominant search programs within each half-year interval from 1995 through 2003.


All NEA's




Large* NEA's

*Large is defined as an asteroid having an absolute magnitude (H) of 18.0 or brighter which roughly corresponds to diameters of 1 km or larger.




The LINEAR, NEAT, Spacewatch, LONEOS, and Catalina are the search programs utilized by NASA, more info on them here.

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...


As of June 12, 2004, 2890 Near-Earth objects have been discovered. 719 of these NEOs are asteroids with a diameter of approximately 1 kilometer or larger. Also, 610 of these NEOs have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid's potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth. Specifically, all asteroids with an Earth Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) of 0.05 AU or less and an absolute magnitude (H) of 22.0 or less are considered PHAs. In other words, asteroids that can't get any closer to the Earth (i.e. MOID) than 0.05 AU (roughly 7,480,000 km or 4,650,000 mi) or are smaller than about 150 m (500 ft) in diameter (i.e. H = 22.0 with assumed albedo of 13%) are not considered PHAs.

There are currently 610 known PHAs.

This "potential'' to make close Earth approaches does not mean a PHA will impact the Earth. It only means there is a possibility for such a threat. By monitoring these PHAs and updating their orbits as new observations become available, we can better predict the close-approach statistics and thus their Earth-impact threat.

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...



Here is a list of the 610 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. Click on any one to see the asteroid's orbit.

If the Earth was going to get hit with major impacts, I do not believe the governments of the world would inform the public. The reason I see it that way is because the most likely impact zone would be the world's oceans since they cover most of the planets surface.

If a major comet/asteroid hits the planet, a dust cloud would be thrown up around the whole planet lasting either years or decades depending upon the size and speed of the impactor. With less sunlight, crops would not grow as fast or as well. There would be some starvation and probably wars over food. Now why would our governments want to warn millions of extra people to evacuate coastal areas when we won't have enough food? If everyone evacuated 100 miles inland away from all coasts, there would be millions of homeless desperate people and food would become scarce even without these extra millions of homeless people. I could easily see no warning coming from the government. However, I might envision a short warning time of only hours. The governments could say they told us even though it wouldn't matter by then. You can't evacuate the entire coast in only a few hours. Unfortunately, people would die stuck on the highways. However, at least you could say that you went out with a bang. I don't believe we're going to have any really bad impacts this month though.

Originally posted by ProudAmerican
This "potential'' to make close Earth approaches does not mean a PHA will impact the Earth. It only means there is a possibility for such a threat.

And also that smaller disturbances in it's orbit could lead to impact course.

Originally posted by orionthehunter
If a major comet/asteroid hits the planet, a dust cloud would be thrown up around the whole planet lasting either years or decades depending upon the size and speed of the impactor. With less sunlight, crops would not grow as fast or as well. There would be some starvation and probably wars over food.

That dust cloud would be smallest of your problems.

www.space.com...
So dinosaurs, if they were not consumed in a firestorm, would have had to live through a torturous sequence of events -- from the barbecue to the freezer, to a dip in acid and then a hothouse baking.

www.space.com...

I think with the resources and technology that the average person now has access to, it should be our individual responsibility to keep our eyes on things like this in case of a possible catastrophe. They only tell us what they want us to know, we have to find the rest for ourselves.