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Another Close Call! (1 Viewer)

Chet_F

Supporting Actor
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Mar 1, 2002
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"are so faint that they are almost impossible to find until they are right on top of us"
Right and wrong. This last one and another one in march(very close also) came at us from the sun. This means that with current technology we will be UNABLE to predict these types of trajectories. In other words our warning will be the bright light before the end of humanity. Scary to say the least. Fortuantely, as mentioned before, we currently can't do anything about it.
The last meter that size, Tunguska, flattened a swath path for hundreds of square miles. That's a city and then some!!!
Here's a link for more info:
http://www.galenalink.com/~pirates/explode.html
Very interesting reading to say the least
 

Danny R

Supporting Actor
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May 23, 2000
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What amazes me is that something so relatively small (50-120 yards wide) would not hit due to the Earth's gravity.

You have to remember that these meteors and other objects are moving extremely fast relative to earth (much faster than escape velocity). If not on a direct collision course, the Earth's gravity will only alter its trajectory slightly, not grab it.
 

Brian Perry

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Chet,

I am curious how something can be described as coming from the sun's direction. This asteroid is traveling 23,000 mph. The distance to the sun is 93 million miles. Therefore, this asteroid would take several months to span our part of the solar system. Wouldn't it be out of the sun's glare for some of that time?
 

Chet_F

Supporting Actor
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Mar 1, 2002
Messages
776
Brian Perry
Acording to what I have read so far the ellipical orbit of the meteor was so that it flew straight at us after rounding the sun. Therefore the only side of the earth that would be toward the approaching meteor was the sun side. That said, it is currently impossible to see a celestial object during the day and thus cannot be predicted.
Make sense?
Also something from msnbc:
"It was only after the object made the switch to the night sky that astronomers with the LINEAR asteroid-tracking effort in New Mexico could gather enough data to compute its orbit."
Here's the link:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/177595.asp?0si=-
"Wouldn't it be out of the sun's glare for some of that time?"
Only if it was able to be seen from out of our elliptical orbit or coming at us prior to rounding the sun.
 

Mark Shannon

Screenwriter
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May 27, 2002
Messages
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But the third-closest approach - at 120,000km - was object 2002 MN, which was about 80m in diameter. If on target, that could have exploded in the Earth's lower atmosphere and devastated a couple of thousand square kilometres on the ground.
Kinda hard to imagine, if you really think of it... How an 80M wide object can destroy an area several thousands of kilometers. SO I guess it just that one could wipe out all of the US? Or is the US bigger than that?
 

Lance Nichols

Supporting Actor
Joined
Dec 29, 1998
Messages
726
Mark, not that hard to imagine. An 80m wide piece of rock slamming into the Earth with escape velocities will have HUGE energy potentials.

Have a lock at a globe, that nice, big semi-circular coastline between the US and Mexico (the Yucatan Peninsula) is likely THE asteroid strike. Sudbury and its wonderful nickel mines? A nickel-iron impact (look at over head shots of the Canadian shield, very noticeable).

Something as big as 80m will pump huge amounts of energy into the atmosphere as it decelerated, punching a tunnel though the atmosphere, then burning the surrounding air into high energy plasma. If it exploded in mid air, it would have all the devastation of a really big air burst nuclear weapon.
 

MarkHastings

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Jan 27, 2003
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I keep thinking about this Armageddon quote:
President: We didn't see this thing coming?
Dan: Well, our object collision budget allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and begging your pardon, but that's a big-ass sky.
I wonder how true that line is? How much of the sky is NASA able to monitor with their budget? How much would we have to spend to monitor the entire sky? Is it even possible?
 

Max Leung

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Geez for a moment I thought Julie was back!
Much more shocking than another asteroid scare. :D
 

Edwin_C

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jul 21, 2003
Messages
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I wonder how true that line is? How much of the sky is NASA able to monitor with their budget? How much would we have to spend to monitor the entire sky? Is it even possible?
Well, considering NASA's main objective is space exploration, I don't think monitoring the sky is their main priority. So, I doubt that they monitor too much of the sky. Of the 14 facilities they have, only 1 falls partially under this objective, Goddard in NY.

No matter how many technological advances we achieve, there will always be something out there that we can't stop. Colonizing other planets? I don't see this as happening anytime soon. At most, we'll get to colonize Mars. But even that's a far fetch. Getting out of our solar system is something that, if it does happen, will probably happen later then we need. All the money in the world won't help speed up our understanding of physics. We won't ever be on the top of things, [place your belief here] will always keep us down.
 

Mark Shannon

Screenwriter
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May 27, 2002
Messages
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Lance, I know it's possible. It's just one of those things that the human mind can't really grasp. Like the size of a really large number.
 

Scott McGillivray

Supporting Actor
Joined
Sep 20, 1999
Messages
932
Holy crap Max!
I just about spewed up coffee out my nose!!!
Here I am reading an interesting thread about space travel and extintion level events and WHAM! The big 36DD hits me!
Hilarious!:laugh:
 

Eric_E

Supporting Actor
Joined
Aug 8, 2002
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Lance, I know it's possible. It's just one of those things that the human mind can't really grasp. Like the size of a really large number.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/1...eut/index.html
Anyone else read this? Scientists in Paris think they've discovered that the universe has a soccer-ball type structure and that it is indeed finite. Now that's the part I have trouble comprehending. If the universe is finite, what's outside it?! What would happen if you were at the absolute edge of the universe?
 

Max Leung

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Sep 6, 2000
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Spherical pentagon? Is there such a thing? I can't visualize that nearly as easy as the number I will not name.

Well at least we know the universe is "finite". I wonder though...if you had an extremely fast spaceship, could you travel so far that you end up at the starting point?
 

Jack Briggs

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Jun 3, 1999
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I am happy to report (and I assume she doesn't mind my doing so) that our friend Ms. K answered a recent e-mail of mine. Seems she is very busy working on mission-anomoly scenarios with the MER team. Her pet spaceships and their dune-buggy payloads are in good health, she reports.

Man, Mars is going to be one hell of a busy place come the beginning of the year. Two spacecraft are already in orbit there, soon to be joined by MERs A and B, the U.K. Beagle probe, and a Japanese orbiter.
 

Paul McElligott

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Jul 2, 2002
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Real Name
Paul McElligott
How an 80M wide object can destroy an area several thousands of kilometers. SO I guess it just that one could wipe out all of the US? Or is the US bigger than that?
The U.S. is much bigger than that. An area of ten thousand square KM would "only" be 100 KM on a side. This rock could probably wipe out the L.A. basin or Manhattan but not the whole U.S.
 

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