Bloody Hell!!!!!

kinetic

Last week an asteroid the size of a football pitch passed within 75000 miles of the earth,well within the orbit of the moon. This is only the sixth known asteroid ever to do so and, if it had hit ,the devastation would have been similar to a H-bomb blast. The asteroid was detected by the Lincoln observatory in the U.S. three days before it passed the earth. Thanks for the warning guys! It makes you wonder if an asteroid was on a collision course with the earth if we would actually be told.

Greebo_x

If they told us there wouldn't be a damned thing we could do about it, E. Teller's fantasies about "peaceful" uses for H-bombs notwithstanding...

digitalwanderer

I'm floored, I just don't have words.

Zardon

yes thats an incredible story... my jaw just hit the computer table there.

David

EKKKKKK........... yes great warning lol what happened to all those people watching

Greebo_x

I used to work at a NASA center and did work with the Space Sciences directorate, and one of the things I learned was that asteroids are notoriously difficult to see. Many of them don't reflect that much light and, even up close, they are very small compared to the ambient background. Something like a global radar warning system would be a step in the right direction; even then you have the problem of filtering out all of the junk that we have lofted around our OWN planet, which is non-trivial if you are looking for something that is relatively close.

BTW- I was involved in overseeing the first demo of the SETI systems now used by the SETI Institute (after the U.S. Congress told NASA to get out of the SETI business), which was done using the telescope at Arecibo in PR. The very first things learned by the SETI program were a) a LOT of earth-based radar reflects off the moon, and b) the nuclear reactors on Soviet spy satellites which officially "don't exist" are noisy as hell in the radio bands... As a result, the next phase of the program shifted to a protocol where any "positive" sighting would be matched by a second telescope in a different hemisphere; that way you eliminate most 'local' signal sources. One of the earliest "candles" used to calibrate the SETI systems was that they detected Pioneer 10, which left the solar system years ago...

kinetic

I understand the difficulties but surely if they can spot Pioneer 10 (about the size of a bus,right?) leaving the Solar System then surely they should be able to track something the size of a football pitch in our own backyard.

digitalwanderer

It's knowing where to look for them that's the tricky bit. In the case of the Pioneer 10 they know where it's at & which way it's going and at what speed. An unknown asteroid we don't have the slightest idea where to start looking for it at.

GREAT post kinetic, I didn't know you were actually a part of geek history! One question, what real good would a world wide radar system do? Wouldn't it be way too late to do anything about it by the time radar saw it?

Doomtrooper

Not sure if any other space geeks were watching, but when Shoemaker and Levy comet hit Jupiter they hit with enough force of 200,000 megatons of TNT..or would have split earth wide open like cracking a egg.
[IMG]ftp://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/pub/astro/SL9/images/recent/ALL/CAO_A.gif[/IMG]

desmo

They could put 3 radar units in geosynchronous orbit way out past the moon. That should help with spurious earth signals.

kinetic

There is a foolproof early-warning system and that is to look out for an enormous dust cloud. That'll be the V.I.P's running to the mountains!

Mr V

Great film BTW!

UberLord

Erm - its from Duke Nukem. The game - not a film been made yet :/

Shake it Baby!

kinetic

[quote]Originally posted by Doomtrooper
[b]Not sure if any other space geeks were watching, but when Shoemaker and Levy comet hit Jupiter they hit with enough force of 200,000 megatons of TNT..or would have split earth wide open like cracking a egg.

Certainly living up to your name there!

digitalwanderer

Nope, it's from the John Carpenter film "They Live" and it's 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper who delivers the line. (If he had a different voice he'd make a pretty good Duke Nukem. Hell, even with the voice a little different he'd still be good. )

I think the movie was before the game, but I could be wrong. (I remember seeing the movie back in high school I think, and I graduated in '84....)

DallasStar

I can understand why it was so hard spotting the comet. I was with my uncle with his extremely expensive telescope with the highest magnification turned on and I had trouble even finding Jupiter!

kinetic

Did you take the lens cap off? I do that all the time.

kinetic

Another asteroid is on a possible collision course with earth. Codenamed NT7 the rock has been assessed as 'positive' on the impact risk scale Palermo- the first time this has ever happened. Peter Bond of the Royal Astronomical Society reassuringly said that the odds of impact are currently 60,000-1 but, if it did hit it, would cause a continental size explosion.
NT7 circles the sun every 837 days in a tilted orbit around Mars to just within Earth's orbit but, on the 1st Feb 2019 there is a chance that it could hit the Earth.
Dr Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University says "Sooner or later we WILL meet an object on a collision course and that is as certain as 'Amen' in church"

DallasStar

a related thread: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...eadid=33628059

MikeDaMan

The chances of the asteroid hitting us is less than 1 in 200,000 so I dont think we have a lot to worry about. And if it does hit us well.......then we all say goodbye to the world and head for the hills!

GravY

LONDON (AP) -- Astronomers are carefully monitoring a newly discovered 1.2-mile-wide (2 km) asteroid to see whether it is on a collision course with Earth.

Initial calculations indicate there is a chance the asteroid — known as 2002 NT7 — will hit the Earth on February 1, 2019. But scientists said Wednesday that the calculations are preliminary and the risk to the planet is low.

"The threat is very minimal," Donald Yeomans, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "An object of this size would be expected to hit the Earth every few million years, and as we get additional data I think this threat will go away."

The object was detected on July 9 by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Project in New Mexico. It orbits the sun every 837 days, and NASA scientists predict its path could intersect with the Earth's orbit. But they say more observations over the coming months will help them plot its course more accurately.

NASA's Near Earth Object program gives the asteroid a rating of "0" on the Torino impact hazard scale — within a range of "events meriting careful monitoring," but not concern.

However, the discovery has provided more ammunition for those who say humans should take the risk posed by space objects more seriously.

"There's a good chance this particular object won't hit us, but we know that a large object will hit us sooner or later," said British lawmaker Lembit Opik, who has long warned of the danger posed by asteroids.

NASA estimates that asteroids big enough to cause catastrophic destruction could theoretically hit Earth every million years, or at longer intervals.

Last month an asteroid the size of a soccer field missed the Earth by 75,000 miles — less than one-third of the distance to the moon in one of the closest known approaches by objects of its size. Scientists said if it had hit a populated area, it would have released as much energy as a large nuclear weapon.


http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/0....ap/index.html

Scoop

Were doomed, all doomed!
Make the most of life while we can, Im gona go and get that new car I always promised my self the one that says buy now pay 2019 sounds good.

Scoop

Scoop

Is it any closer yet?

kinetic

Lol! You've not been losing sleep over this have you?

Zarathustra

Apparently so if he replied to a 5 month old thread