Asteroid heading for New York? You better pray, NASA chief tells US Congress

Originally posted by magma
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

And why do you say that like it is a bad thing? Why wouldn't they "prep" the world for a possible asteroid hit?

My belief is the article is a disclaimer and is a prep. It really means people have no excuse because they have been forewarned. I am sure there is more to come in the way of warning as the time approaches.

What "excuse" do you thnik people would need in case of an asteroid impact???????

Not that we can actually do anything about it anyway. Maybe evacuate the city and head for the hills in advance?

Indeed - as has been pointed out perhaps as long as 3 weeks.... by 2015.....if the rock does actually get spotted....

reply to post by magma


Preparing, or coming out and finally admitting to the public nothing could be done IF one was going to hit the earth?

I really doubt they are Prepping us for an impact.

What they have said just now, will do nothing but instill more fear if one is announced to be on a collision course with earth with significant mass enough to make it to the ground.

I see no Prepping here. Prepping would entail, a warning, suggestions on how to avoid the impact zone, evacuation plans, potential post strike hazards.

What we see here is a realistic answer to an impact scenario. If a space rock is going to hit the Earth, there is nothing any of us here could do to stop it.

Nothing more than a little realism.

Originally posted by magma
reply to post by jinni73

 

even though they have the technology to blow any rock out of our path.

proof?

Attempting to blow any asteroid up is a really bad idea as what's probably gonna happen (depending on size of course), is your liable to create not just one impact site but many

Additionally, there are no set procedures in place to deal with such an event should it occur, although I have heard ideas such as painting one side white (to reflect light) in order to change an asteroids course.

Going on what happened in Russia, it's pretty scary that it got through and I would have to say, if it happened once, it can and probably will happen again.

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

What "excuse" do you thnik people would need in case of an asteroid impact???????

The point I was making is that they have no excuse for not knowing that an asteroid was coming. Pretty much it would be all over the news that it was going to hit.

reply to post by magma


Indeed it would.

but I'm still not sure why that is important or relevant - they'd shortly be dead!!

Originally posted by Zcustosmorum
[
Attempting to blow any asteroid up is a really bad idea as what's probably gonna happen (depending on size of course), is your liable to create not just one impact site but many

That depends how big or small the fragments are - if you could split it up into many "chelyabinsk" sized fragments then you get a lot of contrails and sonic booms - but no impact at all.

Additionally, there are no set procedures in place to deal with such an event should it occur, although I have heard ideas such as painting one side white (to reflect light) in order to change an asteroids course.

Probably takes a while!

as would changing its course through explosions or concentrating sunlight on one spot to make it "jet".

Personaly I think we have eth components required to do many of these things - but we have not developed a system to put them all into a package that would actually work.

I suspect that someone is working on it though - or perhaps this is part of the lobbying to get the funds for someone to work on it??

Going on what happened in Russia, it's pretty scary that it got through and I would have to say, if it happened once, it can and probably will happen again.

that it "got through" what? there is nothing to stop anything hitting earth ATM except a ring of space junk and satalites!!

"probably" is not on the table - chelyabinsk will certainly happen again somewhere - a larger asteroid making some sort of actual impact with the earth is also a certainty if you take a long enough view and assume no human activity gets in the way.

If you look up "how much space dust falls to earth?" you get answers from 3-100 tons per day.....

Avoid boy scout cars. They are made out of balsa wood.

It keeps the randy meteors away.

reply to post by magma


I can think of plenty of reasons for them not to know.

Look at the object the blew up over Russia, 15 + meter estimates by various agencies. Look up at the sky, the objects you can see are tens of thousands of kilometers minimum. Some of those stars up there are larger than our entire solar systems expanse, 50AU. (1 AU = 149,597,870.7KM)

So think about this. Our solar system is enormous, there is a whole lot of objects to look at, track, discover. Anything less than a kilometer is nearly impossible to spot unless the absolute perfect conditions play out. ( You're looking in the exact right spot, the sun is shining on the object and it happens to be incredibly reflective.)

For instance D type asteroids tend to have low reflectivity. What does this mean as far as detection goes? They are pretty much freaking invisible unless they happen to cross your line of sight while the sun hits them, and you aren't blinking of course.

Heck, objects several hundred km across are happened upon by complete accident. So it's incredibly possible an object 200m or less could get as close as a day, or even a few hours from earth and never be detected. It's all a matter of it's angle of approach, the direction it's coming from, and it's reflectivity.

An object 100km across with low reflectivity could approach from behind the sun, and we would have no way of knowing about it.

I don't know where people get this notion that NASA knows about every object in the sky, which direction it came from, and where it's going came from.

Once an object is discovered, NASA as well as other space observatories can do a pretty damn good job of keeping track of them, but they don't know about every single object in space. That would be like trying to observe every damn grain of sand on earth. It's impossible. We know it's there, once we get a piece we can know it's there, but you can't observe every single one.

If an object is posted online and is being observed they have a very good(1,000,000, times better than any of us) idea of where it is going, how ever assuming they know about every object out there is just foolish. Claiming every space observatory on the planet is hiding objects from us is also foolish.

The reality is, if an object is going to strike there is absolutely no way to stop it. We have some alright ways of spotting objects in space, but we can not see, track or detect all of them. I have complete faith in the information, math, and data released to us about known objects. There is simply no need to hide or lie about what another nation could expose.

reply to post by Hijinx


All that means is the chances are pretty high that we will get hit by one.

Even if they did spot it, they can do nothing about it.

We wouldn't have a great deal of time to get out of the way.

NASA just wants more money for their projects, the projects pay their wages. I wouldn't worry about it, I'd rather have the military handle this kind of stuff anyway.

Originally posted by magma
reply to post by Hijinx

 

All that means is the chances are pretty high that we will get hit by one.

Even if they did spot it, they can do nothing about it.

We wouldn't have a great deal of time to get out of the way.

.... We get hit all the time..... If a significant one is coming chances are we will know about it, all I was trying to portray was that we can't possibly know about all of them, and that there is literally nothing we can do if one is going to hit us.

I don't think we are going to see any significant strike in the near future, but it is pretty much a guarantee that we will be hit by space rocks at some point. It's just part of being in the universe we live.

reply to post by magma

The recent event in Russia was nothing as evidenced by the fact that the planet is still here. Meteorites hit this rock every single day. We call them shooting stars but they are meteorites. In all likelihood we would be sitting ducks for any large asteroid that may take aim at us Bruce Willace aside. There are plenty of scars from large asteroids hitting us in the past. I do not believe that there is an impending doom that NASA knows about but is keeping secret. There are way too many amateur astronomers out there that would blow that whistle loud and clear. Now could there be some big scary on track that we cannot see, like coming from behind the sun? Oh yes but NASA doesn't know about it and is not telling us. If its there no one knows about it and it will be a big surprise to everyone and will happen without much notice to put your beloved head between your legs and kiss your hinny goodbye.

Originally posted by rickymouse
NASA just wants more money for their projects, the projects pay their wages. I wouldn't worry about it, I'd rather have the military handle this kind of stuff anyway.

The military can't do anything about asteroids either. If an Asteroid is going to hit Earth it will hit earth. That's literally the Entire scenario.

*discover asteroid(meteor, meteroid, comet.)*

*track it, plot it's trajectory*

*Draw up an orbital Diagram*

*Determine impact risk*

If impact risk is sufficient

*calculate potential impact site*

If potential impact site is not in the majority of the planet uninhabited, or covered in water

* start assessing potential damage, and post impact hazards*

* start planning Evacuation and relocation plans*

Inform public.

*Begin moving individuals to a safe location *

Inform public of the event, the expected effects, any potential post impact hazards.

* wait for impact *

If no post impact hazards are of concern.

* Assess damage in area of impact*

* Search for Meteorite remains, record seismic data, any post impact dust, ejecta, etc.*

At this point the data could be studied for future potential impacts and the repercussions it could have. Ground stability, any ecological or geographical changes. Any changes to weather or atmospheric conditions.

After the assessment of the impact area is complete.

* Inform public of the damages.*

* begin clean up/ repairs *

* Begin moving evacuees back to the impact zone once the situation is safe enough to do so.*

This is quite literally the steps any organization would take in an Impact scenario. It is IMPOSSIBLE to shoot down a meteorite, Asteroid, Meteoroid, Comet. In fact Attempting to do so could cause greater risk to a larger area than leaving the object intact and allowing it to impact. The largest nuke is not going to blast apart many large cosmic bodies, as well getting that nuke to the object would require a huge undertaking. The object would have to be a minimum moons distance for an accurate hit, and at that point you would merely make more pieces to strike the earth, or satellites, not to mention the burst of EM radiation your nuke will give off adding more hazard to those satellites.

As well I might add, shooting a missile at a rock, will merely result in the missile blowing up on the object rather than smashing it to bits. Rock is stronger than the blast the missile could produce. Likely resulting in one large chunk and an assortment of smaller ones. Even if you could " Armageddon" a space rock, it would merely produce more uniform chunks that would still hit the earth.


We currently do not possess any technology that could over come the forward momentum of an incoming cosmic body(asteroid, meteoroid, meteor, comet). The energy that object is carrying will continue to move it's mass forwards no matter what we threw at it. So no deflection.

There are theories that if you could track a long course object and point a laser at it, you could change it's course by fractions of a degree over many years, much the same way a solar sail works, but we don't have a device strong enough, nor focused enough to even experiment in moving a multi thousand to multi million ton space rock with photons(light.)

There is no technology on this planet that can avert an impact period.

reply to post by jinni73


Oh here we go.

reply to post by karen61560


Thank you karen!! I said much the same thing In my earlier post!

I'm happy to see another bright mind amongst the muddy waters of ATS.

Originally posted by violet
There's already thread about this, minus the mention of NY

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Please add further comments to the ongoing discussion in the above linked thread.
Thanks

**Thread Closed**