I’ve read the recent news reports suggesting that an asteroid is possibly going to strike the earth one February day in 2019. I have to admit the prospect does not entirely fill me with dread but it has made me think.
If the earth is struck by this lump of space rock will it be ‘the end of the world’, or is it a survivable event?
Do you believe it has only just been discovered or do you think there might be a bit of a cover up? Let me explain, over the last few years there have been several movies based on this scenario (Meteor, Deep Impact, Armageddon, space Cowboys?). Do you think this is coincidence or do you think this is the way in which world leaders are preparing us for an event they have known for sometime is going to happen?
Assuming it is going to hit us, are we to believe that it can be destroyed or diverted using the technology we have today?
Just wondered what anyone else thought.
Regards,
kev35
By: Saab 2000 - 31st July 2002 at 07:12
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
Well as I said earlier its going to miss us,however,watch out 2060!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2158898.stm
By: Arabella-Cox - 31st July 2002 at 01:16
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
“not just a tail of fire, its safe to say that any meteorite you see will almost all burn up in the atmosphere, as it encounters the friction of the atmosphere.”
By definition a meteorite has to hit the ground.
(A meteorite is a rock that hits the ground… a meteor enters the atmosphere but doesn’t hit the ground (either because it burns up or just skims the atmosphere)… while the objects we are talking about that might or might not hit the Earth in 10-20 years time are meteroids… ie in space.
Only very small or very soft objects burn up in our atmosphere.
The Object the exploded over Tunguska was probably a comet… ie a dirty snowball. An object made of rock or metal is much less likely to explosively destroy itself high up in the atmosphere. If it comes down vertically it probably has 30km of real burning time. The atmosphere above 30km is not really dense enough to significantly heat the meteor. Meteoroid speed can range from 20km/s right up to about 60km/s depending where it came from. As you can see this means at worst 1.5 seconds or at best 1/3rd of a second worth of heating before impact.
A piece of rock the size of your fist would also slow down as well as lose material at a high rate at would probably not make it to the ground. Many of the fine streaks of light seen in the night sky and called meteors are the size of a grain of sand.
A piece of rock or iron coming in at 30km/s the size of a mountain will not be effected very much by our atmosphere.
Look at the moon.
There are some enormous impacts there. The Earth would look much worse if we didn’t have an atmosphere and shifting tectonic plates to erode and bury the evidence. (We are a much larger target and our gravity would capture many more objects than the moon has…)
By: T5 - 30th July 2002 at 22:12
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
I’m so negative, but if it hits… it hits!
We shouldn’t let it get to us, but forget about it and appreciate the 21,000 days or so that we have left before this object hits us.
By: coanda - 30th July 2002 at 21:26
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
and you believe everything you hear or read in the news….if it had been big enuff to take out part of the earth, there would have been more appreciable effects……not just a tail of fire, its safe to say that any meteorite you see will almost all burn up in the atmosphere, as it encounters the friction of the atmosphere.
One such side effects is a crazy crazy meteorological pattern.
Maybe these are just false alarms, but because of the lack of funding for these projects you can see how they are important to be publicised because of the possible monetary funding available.
coanda
By: mixtec - 30th July 2002 at 18:48
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
I saw on telivision some film footage taken in canada of a large meteorite streaking across the sky. The announcer mentioning that this was a near miss and that it was estimated that an asteroid of that size would have destroyed a major part of the world. Im not sure what to think of that because Id think such an incident would have created greater attention than that.
By: Geforce - 30th July 2002 at 10:50
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
Chances are 1 out of 250000.
By: KabirT - 30th July 2002 at 09:09
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
wow that was fast…. 😀
By: Saab 2000 - 30th July 2002 at 09:04
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
It is a 0 now,the news is reporting that more calculations have said it will miss!
By: KabirT - 30th July 2002 at 09:02
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
the chances are 1 out of 10…which will gradually be 0…..so :9
By: Hand87_5 - 30th July 2002 at 07:33
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
[updated:LAST EDITED ON 30-07-02 AT 07:35 AM (GMT)]Good point Michael,
1) Since this type of object dosn’t have a smooth orbital , it’s rather hard the predict the impact. I read that the accuracy is so far not better than a couple of 100000000 of miles !!!
2) The size of the stuff is roughly 2km which is big enough to initiate major damages on earth .
3) As you said , there is time enough ahead to design any kind of “shield”
4) I guess that I have read a such story 5 years ago ….. to be continued
By: Saab 2000 - 30th July 2002 at 07:31
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
[updated:LAST EDITED ON 30-07-02 AT 07:32 AM (GMT)]Hmmm the media must be having a short news summer,this always comes out ever summer.I can remember that for the last 3 to 4 years there has been an astroid scare,yet its always said its going to miss us.
Anyway,if bad films such as Deep Impact and Armageddon haven’t taught us anything,its that we can send people to blow up the astroid.If I remember rightly,one still hit in the end of Deep impact. :9
By: RadiO - 29th July 2002 at 22:27
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
Whoops. 🙁
Er, I’ve sorted it all out now. Sorry, mate!
By: T5 - 29th July 2002 at 22:25
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
LOL… Duplicated!
Totally Bonkers – I’m on 700 posts!
By: RadiO - 29th July 2002 at 22:23
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
[updated:LAST EDITED ON 29-07-02 AT 10:26 PM (GMT)]I must admit to feeling a certain, er, lack of urgency once I discovered that it was Lembit Opik MP who kicked off this media frenzy, and not NASA or the US State Department. Sorry, Mr. Opik; Your cause is just.
By: T5 - 29th July 2002 at 21:27
RE: Asteroid approaching earth.
I read about the first report on the BBC News site the other day, surprised it had hadn’t been brought up sooner:
(Taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2158898.stm)
Astronomers have ruled out an Earth impact from asteroid 2002 NT7 on 1 February 2019 – but they say, as yet, future collisions have not been completely excluded.
2002 NT7, a two-kilometre-wide (1.4 miles) chunk of rock, was discovered on 9 July. Initial estimates of its orbit suggested there was a small chance of it colliding with our planet in 17 years’ time.
However, the latest observations accumulated over the last few days have confirmed the asteroid will fly harmlessly by.
Dr Don Yeomans, of the US space agency’s (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: “We can now rule out any impact possibilities for 1 February 2019.”
Uncharted space
But further work needs to be done to confirm that 2002 NT7 is not a threat further into the future.
Dr Yeomans added: “While we cannot completely rule out an impact possibility for 1 February 2060, it seems very likely that this possibility will soon be ruled out as well.”
Analysts expect that it will be several more weeks before new observations allow a much better picture to emerge about 2002 NT7’s future movements.
This is because no past observations – that could be used to pinpoint its trajectory – have been found in astronomical archives. This is because the asteroid’s unusual orbit takes it into regions of space that are seldom surveyed.
But astronomers say that their concern about 2002 NT7 has not evaporated completely.
Media debate
According to Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, UK, we should not be celebrating too quickly.
“It would be prudent to caution interested observers that further observations in the near future could result in new impact dates,” he told BBC News Online.
“There is even a very small possibility that the next set of observations may lead to new impact dates and a prolonged period of fluctuating impact probabilities, before the object will eventually be dropped,” he said.
The intense worldwide interest in 2002 NT7 has prompted a debate in the astronomical community.
Following the object’s discovery, and the realisation that it could strike the Earth in 2019, astronomers decided to make no announcement whilst they monitored the situation.
Some astronomers have been unhappy with what they see as alarmist reporting in the media, and they say that the policy on public disclosure of such information should be reviewed.
—
The first one they reported on was supposedly large enough to wipe out an entire continent – but considering the world is 75% water, it would stand more chance of striking the sea and causing a huge tidal wave causing damage to more than a continent!
Face it, 58 years from now, we’ll all be nearing death (sounds grim, but we will if we aren’t already) and if technology carries on getting better at the same rate it is at the moment, we’ve nothing to worry about. We’ve got almost 6 decades to do something, why don’t they start designing an asteroid destroyer now?!
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July 29, 2002 at 8:35 pm