News: Surprise asteroid nearly hits home

Ye-ouch... not the first time, by any means... still a surprise when you hear it.

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Surprise asteroid nearly hits home
June 20, 2002 Posted: 5:39 PM EDT (2139 GMT)


By Richard Stenger
CNN

(CNN) -- An asteroid the size of a football field passed extremely close to Earth last week but it remained undetected until days later, astronomers said Thursday.

The space rock missed our planet Friday by only 75,000 miles (120,000 km), about one-third the distance to the moon, making the near collision one of the closest ever recorded.

Cruising at 6.2 miles (10 km) per second, the big boulder could have unleashed some major firepower had it struck, according to the NEO (Near Earth Objects) Information Center in Leicester, England.

[...]

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

I'm amazed that it wasn't detected sooner. Isn't this monitored fairly closely by scientists the world over?

As I understand it, most of the objects in the "asteroid" realm of things aren't really easy to spot when they're coming toward us... but once they pass us, it gets our attention. If I recall, it has something to due with the way in which the light reflects off the asteroid (I'll have to find the link again somewhere).

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And, if they're coming from us from the same direction as the sun, well... ever try catching a fast moving baseball while looking in to the sun? It usually doesn't work too well...
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That makes sense...god it's late and I'm tired...why am I even still here?

Oh yeah, I"m working. HAH

This brings up the question, would you want to know anyway if you were going to be squished by an astroid anyway? Could you really run out of it's path? Doubtful, especially if everyone else was running with you.

that makes three this year, one in January, i believe the second was around april. the second one wasn't discovered until it passed us. it came from direction of the sun making it very hard to spot. this is really scarry. think ill go watch armageddon. bruce willis rules!

I have to break down and watch that movie, just haven't gotten around to it.

They're all over the system, and no, the astronomers cannot "monitor" even a fraction of the ones that exist that are in near-earth orbits. Even more difficult is trying to decide what they are made of; whether it is of a composition and size that burns up on entry or whether it is of a material (such as heat-resistant but fracture on impact, like crystal, into jillions of smaller projectiles running around at 20,000 mph. Tap in "astronomy" and you can find several of the observatories, and even a few of them are telling the truth about the difficulty of even all the observatories getting together, dividing up the sky into grids, and finding those whizzers before they get close. Have desert first; life is short and unpredictable. (Just joking :D)

techiechick, you gotta see it!

Where would have been the estimated point of impact? (had it to hit us?)

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Originally posted here by TechieChick
This brings up the question, would you want to know anyway if you were going to be squished by an astroid anyway? Could you really run out of it's path? Doubtful, especially if everyone else was running with you.

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Ahhhh haaaa! Eureka! I have a very scientific solution to this one. While everyone is running. They can all run to the same place on one side of the planet thereby offsetting the planets gravity and stearing us out of the way of the big rock.... Of course then thats another issue, when we stear out of the way we may plunge to our firey deaths in the sun or go towards deep space and our new frozen habbitat. Hmmm... Oh well.... Simple solution.. Get in the crash position... Put our heads between our legs and kiss our a$$es goodbye...... :p

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Originally posted here by TechieChick
This brings up the question, would you want to know anyway if you were going to be squished by an astroid anyway?

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i can answer that easily: without a doubt, yes i would. if it was small enough to be localized damnage i would want to be able to assess the possibility of escape and if possible do so. if it would not be possible to escape, i would want to be able to grab my girlfriend and spend my last hours here with her and family and such(maybe do a quick marrage-type cerimony since we wouldnt get the chance to)

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Could you really run out of it's path? Doubtful, especially if everyone else was running with you.

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well, like i said, it would depend on how localized the damnage was going to be. for instance, if it was going to be a "earth killer", i would rather die in the innitial impact than escape that only to live for a few months then starve to death because plants wont grow and all the animals have died and are rotting.

They are doing a better job at monitoring those recently but obviously the coverage isn't good enough yet...

I saw on the Discovery channel that they are now using arrays of automated telescopes that take snapshots of the night sky at some interval and then a software compares the diffrences between the snapshots and evaluates if it's an asteroid...

It's pretty effective and many (alot more than before) are being named each day...

Ammo

i can't help myself.. i have to throw in a bit of humor taken from satirewire

http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/asteroid.shtml

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SCIENTISTS TO STUDY GIANT ASTEROIDS
BY STEERING THEM INTO EARTH
Are Major Asteroid As Dangerous As Predicted? The Answer Arrives in 2003

London (SatireWire.com) — Disappointed after failing to take advantage of Earth's relatively near miss with a large asteroid on Monday, scientists today excitedly unveiled what they called an "asteroid chute" that they said will direct the next massive space object directly into Earth's path, where it can be studied more closely.

Scientists hope the redirected asteroid, now expected to strike Earth by June of 2003, will also settle a pair of long-running debates: Did an asteroid cause the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago? And what size must an asteroid be in order for it to render a planet uninhabitable?

According to Michael Banio of Great Britain's Royal Astronomical Society, asteroid "2001 YB5" passed within 375,000 miles of Earth on Monday, but it was still too far away for useful studies to be conducted. And because YB5 was not discovered until December, scientists did not have time to prepare for its arrival. However, using electron particle impulses emitted by a modified NASA satellite early this morning, British and American astrophysicists said they successfully nudged the next asteroid, a kilometer-wide giant they've labeled 2002 CUL8R, directly into Earth's path.

Asked what impact CUL8R will have, NASA astrophysicist Karen Lurg excitedly hesitated to speculate.

"Well, we're not sure, and that's the beauty of it," she said. "What we think will happen is, the ECO (Earth Crossing Object), which most likely has an iron/nickel core, will slam into Earth with the force of roughly 1 million nuclear bombs. But now we'll be able to test that hypothesis."

"The 1 million nuclear bombs is an average postulation, by the way," she added. "Some say 2 million. Others, believe it or not, say only 15,000. I think those folks are going to have egg on their faces when it's all said and done."
The non-scientific community, however, failed to share Lurg's interest. Moments after the announcement, the United Nations Security Council demanded that CUL8R be directed away from Earth immediately, and dozens of international leaders called the chute "catastrophically irresponsible" and "just bad science."

Scientists were quick to label the reaction "typical laymen's myopia."

"Every 10 million years, an object at least 1km across smashes into Earth, so it's inevitable that someday it's going to happen," said Banio. "By steering such objects toward us now and studying the results close up, we will be better prepared for that eventuality."

Meanwhile, Heinrich Voom, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, bristled at the charges of capriciousness. "Far from being irresponsible, we plan to strictly adhere to the Scientific Method; that is: Observe. Hypothesize. Predict. Test. Repeat until there are no discrepancies left," he said.

"It's the 'no discrepancies left' part that bothers me," countered U.S. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

Voom acknowledged that CUL8R may not settle every question. Three years ago, scientists at Los Alamos predicted an asteroid three miles across that strikes the mid-Atlantic Ocean would produce a tidal wave that would cover the East Coast of the United States to the Appalachian Mountains. It would also envelop the coasts of France and Portugal. Voom conceded CUL8R is not large enough to adequately test this model. However, he insisted, even a small tidal wave that only destroys Portugal would be useful in devising further experiments with the asteroid chute.

Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, however, said he would rather the model remain in the hypothetical stage. "I do not want to be a resolved discrepancy," he said.

Sampaio added that if the asteroid must come, he wished it would come now and "get it over with," but Voom said the rock should not be rushed.

"If we were to increase the asteroid's speed, we would not have enough time to apply for several multi-million-dollar grants we'll need to study its impact," he explained. "That is what I would call bad science."

POTENTIAL OUTCOMES
http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02...s/asteroid.jpg

"We don't know what will happen," said one NASA astrophysicist.
"It's all so very exciting."

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couple things ...i think the worldwide budget for watching these things is about what the population of los angeles spends on big macs in one day...not enough eyes to catch em all...

had we seen it...would it have mattered?...unfortunately billy bob and bruce are busy on separate movie projects,...they won't be available to save the earth...and oh...we don't have the tech to do anything anyways...(well...if we had 2 years warning maybe...)

finally...i read a theory somewhere recently that we're heading into a much more dangerous plane of the galaxy...something that happens about once every 65 millions years or so..(sound familiar??)

works like this ...as we travel around on the outer edge of the galaxy...we are not only go in a circle...we are also moving up and down through the plane of the galaxy...we've been on the "bottom" side of this plane for millions of years...and we are now moving "up" into the more dense area of the central plane...increasing the risk of debris and collisions...this up and down wobble can be linked to several periods of extinction through out earths history...

the odds are against us...something will hit us...and possibly cause our demise....unless we have the foresite to do something about it...with everyone so caught up in the stupidness of the current global political situation...this isn't likely...

as for planet killer...nah...that's not likely...i'm not sure who said it (Sagan probably) but it went something like this..

It is incorrect that life on earth is endangered by such events. Life will always find away. Human life on the other hand is very much at risk.

Well looks like our luck run out and were all going to die :(! PARANOIC

Well, looking for ones that might hit you is sort of like the proverbial needle in a haystack... Because the gravitational situation in the solar system is changing constantly, so even if there was one that you wanted to look at, it's more than trivial to calculate it's trajectory with good accuracy.

I think the basic idea is that there isn't any official national-level funding for keeping humungous rocks from hitting us and wiping us all out. It's a hobbyists thing.

orbits are 99% of the time not circles but eliptical (I say 99 and not 100 because it's possible but I dont know of any perfect orbits)

the problem with spotting astroids is not enough astronomers and amatures are doing it, most observatories (large one like in argentina) are dedicated to research in deep space objects... I don't see yale university and the other universities making money or fame in that area. I currently working on a server that would predict the path of a near earth object that everyone could have access to.

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Originally posted here by zigar
finally...i read a theory somewhere recently that we're heading into a much more dangerous plane of the galaxy...something that happens about once every 65 millions years or so..(sound familiar??)

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Hmm, where did you here this? Because it doesn't sound quite right...all the asteroids that are hanging around are part of the original gas and dust that made up the solar system, there aren't really any that have come from much beyond the ort cloud region, and most are hanging around the planets. And why exactly would there rock floating around in deep space? Rocks are made of relatively heavy elements, which require a supernova to form. But when a star goes supernova, all of that dust and small particles become part of a planetary nebula, where they will either stay put or start to form rocky bodies around any stars that form. Either way they aren't going to shoot off into space.

As for everyone moving, for osme reason I feel like calculating this. The earth is about 6.0x10^24 kg, and a person is probably around 70kg. Calculate that out, and the human race makes up about 0.000000000007% of the earth's mass...not too big a difference.

ok i didnt read this well at all, infact i only read about half way.

no they cant moniter everything everywhere, i think i read somewhere that theres enuf gadgets to moniter only like 2% os the whole sky...... think about that, thats a 1 in 50 chance that well see our death comming.

oh yeah, and they cant guess the point of impact cause it didnt hit the earth so it really dosnt matter, it didnt hit it never will and it cant (well not on this pass) so theres nothing to worry about or even to ponder about if it was gonna hit my town or not.

dose anyone know when haleys commet is comming thru again? i think it went by soon before or after i was born but im really not sure at all, i just wanna know to know if i shold book my tickets now or if im justgonnabe out of luck unless i live to be like 120 or some thing

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Originally posted here by thesecretfire

Hmm, where did you here this? Because it doesn't sound quite right...

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I think he is refering to the asteroid belt that is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. NASA some time back (I'll have to fond the article) released a white paper and press release about it. The crux of it was. That sometime in the near future the earths eliptical orbit and the asteriod belts orbit pass at their closest point and increases debris in our atmosphere. They stated that while the probability of a collision of some sort was greatly increased, it was highly unlikely. Although, seeing as how they missed the last couple of calls till after the fact. Who knows.

Okay, yeah, but he said galaxy, which is somewhat different (Only a few billion times bigger...nothing major :rolleyes: ) I don't see how people can confuse solar system and galaxy...it's like confusing a city and a country. (Well, more like a grain of sand and a country, but you get the idea)

i did say galaxy...and it was either scientific american...or the discovery channel....and to think back it was prob dc...when i get back home i'll see if i can dig up the source...

if it was solar...we'd be talking 100 of thousands of years...not millions...the idea...is that the "thick" part of the galaxy has far more "debris" than what we've been used to...or possibly just more gravitational effects which may dislodge oort objects and send them inward...either way...there may be something.... the timing of the "wobble" seems right....but then it's just a theory...

but thats ok..we're all doomed anyways... :D ...

nobody gets out alive!!!!

This has been a problem for some time. There are asteroids that they just discovered in recent years that upon futher examination, have been discovered to have come extraordinarily close to the earth in the past.