Our terrifyingly crowded solar system: How the asteroids are closing in

It's not just our country that's getting a little over-crowded - our whole solar system is too.

Fascinating colour-coded footage recorded over 30 years has documented the increasing number of asteroids flying close to Earth.

Created by British astronomer Scott Manley, the three-minute clip - which is the equivalent of two months per second - starts with a sprinkling of white 'dust' around the edge of the planets. - Daily Mail

Interesting video indeed. But I couldn't help think this was verging upon scaremongering, which reminded me of Carol Rosin's Disclosure Project account. In her words the weaponisation of space would be based upon, in order....

Russians
Terrorists
Rogue Nations
Asteroids
E.T

So, are we going to see an increase in videos and articles like this in the near future?

reply to post by LiveForever8


Is this video a show of new asteroids entering our solar-system or is it merely depicting newfound asteroids wich already were present within our solar-system?

2nd

Don't get me wrong, but judging by this video shouldn't the earth have been annihalated like thousands of times by now? By the end of it you can barely see the earth behind the cloud of asteroids!

Cool vid either way

Kyle

reply to post by faceoff85


I believe it is depicting new found asteroids that were always present in the atmosphere that have, thanks to better telescopes and a more concerted effort at tracking them, only recently been discovered.

And you wonder why aliens want nothing to do with earth...

Alien 1: Hey lets check out that planet surrounded by a #@$%storm of asteroids!

Alien 2: No man, my dad will be pissed if I don't bring back the cruiser in one piece...

reply to post by kai22


The funny thing about that video is that it doesn't give any concept of size. Not all asteroids are the size of Texas and out to destroy a planet. The majority of those would either skip off the atmosphere or burn up in it.

It is also neat how you can get a concept of when the video is supposed to be taking place. You can almost see when NEAT and LINEAR went live from the sudden surges in newly sighted asteroids.

As far as talks of placing weapons in space, if it's for defense from inbound objects that wouldn't be viable. Weapons take too much maintenance and money to keep functional here on the ground as it is. On top of that, the chances of anything to be in the right place at the right time to be useful are slim to none.

Weapons in space to be used to "defend" one nation from another are equally dated as a concept. If anything, they would be a temporary stop-gap in using the bigger and cheaper weapons - the asteroids that are already out there. But that's an entirely different topic.


EDIT: A couple typos.

[edit on 8/27/2010 by cmdrkeenkid]

And that's just the larger rocks showing up there. In terms of smaller ones it's an absolute shooting gallery without the benefit of a thick atmosphere to bounce them off or burn them up and the vast majority of asteroids are in a stable orbit between Mars and Jupiter leaving just a relative few that could possibly be a threat to us due to elliptical orbits that take them inside our orbit.

Amazing thing is the number of probes that have made it through the main asteroid belt to Jupiter and beyond without incident. There's a lot more open space out there than the video would make us think.

reply to post by LiveForever8


There aren't any asteroids in our atmosphere actually...

And yes, I agree, such a vid can be used for fear mongering purposes due to the lack of any scale to work to.

reply to post by Chadwickus


My naivety showing through there, you knew what I meant

reply to post by LiveForever8


Yup I did.

If it makes people feel better it's only the yellow and red ones that are a threat (red more so), doesn't seem to be as many of those ones compared to the green ones.

Does'nt anyone get the idea that it looks like a destroyed planet?

If the current planet formation theories should stick, then this field of debris, could have been a planet in ancient time.

Who knows., maybe its even the lost 10th planet?

In fact, it is even possible that the destruction of that planet, even caused catastrophic events on earth.. maybe 65 mill. years ago?



Well.. one can speculate, but then again.. shouldn't all those asteroids have been a planet by now, if they have existed since the birth of our solar system?

[edit on 30-8-2010 by kloejen]