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If You're Worried About Asteroids, Don't Read This...

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posted on Mar, 1 2011 @ 09:22 PM
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I ran across this earlier today, and thought I would share...

From Discovery News - news.discovery.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/de41c29b29d1.jpg[/atsimg]


We humans are notoriously bad at preparing for the worst. But what if "the worst" comes in the form of a billion-ton-speeding-bullet from outer space? Yeah right, that'll never happen...

Sure, it's unlikely to happen any time soon, but as my colleague Mark Thompson pondered in a recent article, would you want to know if an asteroid was about to hit Earth? In fact, do you really want to know how many asteroids there are out there buzzing past the Earth on a regular basis?

No? In that case, don't pay any attention to the following graphic:


Most of us are aware of asteroids when they come near us. Some may not be aware of how many?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b40b2fdc623d.gif[/atsimg]


Yikes! Scary, right?

But don't be too alarmed, this graphic was intended to shock. Those dots are thousands of times bigger than the asteroids/comets themselves and the space rocks' 3D orbits have been projected onto a 2D plane, making it look awfully more crowded than it really is. That said, there sure are a lot of near-Earth objects out there, and the problem needs to be taken seriously.

Probably the most alarming thing to remember is that NASA has only tracked an estimated 1 percent of all the space rocks out there and they need way more funding to find the rest.


The article says the graphic was intended to shock and I think it does the job well. Given that the dots appear larger than the actual asteroids and/or comets, it is still A LOT.

NASA is reported as tracking only 1% of all debri/rocks etc. They lack funding to track the remaining 99% obviously. My question is why?

There are very real possibilities of a large impact at some point and NASA can't get the funds to keep track?

We can give...


21: Road signs touting stimulus funds at work in Ohio ($1 million)


1 million dollars to let us know they are spending millions more repaving roads.



20: Researching how paying attention improves performance of difficult tasks in Connecticut ($850,000)


Because we never knew that if we paid attention we could l e a r n...


hannity.blogs.foxnews.com...

Can our government not see which is more important, or do they just choose not to? What in the world is going on?

edit on 3/1/2011 by Kangaruex4Ewe because: (no reason given)

edit on 3/1/2011 by Kangaruex4Ewe because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 1 2011 @ 09:28 PM
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I'm wondering just when the sun is going to clean up it's mess?

edit on 3/1/2011 by lonegurkha because: (no reason given)



 
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