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Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

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steve_1979
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Earth is going to have a near miss on February the 15th when a large asteroid will pass very close to us.

 

Asteroid '2012 DA14' is 45 meters across with a mass of about 130,000 tons. There is no danger of it actually hitting Earth but it will pass below the orbits of TV and weather satellites. It will be a new record for close approach asteroids since sky surveys began in the 1990s.

 

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Alantiggger
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

steve_1979 wrote:

Earth is going to have a near miss on February the 15th when a large asteroid will pass very close to us.

 

Asteroid '2012 DA14' is 45 meters across with a mass of about 130,000 tons. There is no danger of it actually hitting Earth but it will pass below the orbits of TV and weather satellites. It will be a new record for close approach asteroids since sky surveys began in the 1990s.

 

 

Nothing to worry about ... the end of this World will NOT come about until something  BAD happens between the Arab and the Isrealites (jews) over the Temple in Jerusalem.

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David@FrankHarvey
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

This seems to have hints of "Melancholia" about it.... Shock

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Alantiggger
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

Not at all............. less it happens !               Laughing

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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

FrankHarveyHiFi wrote:

This seems to have hints of "Melancholia" about it.... Shock

 

Mayan-cholia surely???

 

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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

My postcode starts DA13..... Does this mean it'll be passing closest to near where I live? Smile

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David@FrankHarvey
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

jjbomber wrote:
FrankHarveyHiFi wrote:

This seems to have hints of "Melancholia" about it.... Shock

 Mayan-cholia surely??? 

Bdumm, tsssshhhhh!! excellent!

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steve_1979
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

Alantiggger wrote:
Nothing to worry about ... the end of this World will NOT come about until something BAD happens between the Arab and the Isrealites (jews) over the Temple in Jerusalem.

Sorry. I don't see any connection between what you say and asteroids.

Am I missing something? Nostradamus prehaps?

 

 

FrankHarveyHiFi wrote:

This seems to have hints of "Melancholia" about it.... Shock

There's little need for concern. Even if an asteroids trajectory was going to hit Earth we now have the technology to stop it.

party time!

We have designed a spaceship that would fire a heavy payload at an asteroid at with sufficient force to knock it off course.

 

Blowing it up with a nuclear bomb like in the film Armageddon wouldn't work though because Earth would still get hit by millions of tons of rubble instead of a single big rock.

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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

steve_1979 wrote:
FrankHarveyHiFi wrote:

This seems to have hints of "Melancholia" about it.... Shock

There's little need for concern. Even if an asteroids trajectory was going to hit Earth we now have the technology to stop it.

party time!

We have designed a spaceship that would fire a heavy payload at an asteroid at with sufficient force to knock it off course.

Oh good. Is there any danger of us actually building it? Because we only found out how close this thing was going to get a few months ago and that isn't really enough time to build a brand new untested space craft and get it to a successful intercept of an asteroid in that space of time before it's too late to make any difference. Those sort of missions are planned years, if not decades in advance.

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hammill
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

steve_1979 wrote:

Alantiggger wrote:
Nothing to worry about ... the end of this World will NOT come about until something BAD happens between the Arab and the Isrealites (jews) over the Temple in Jerusalem.

Sorry. I don't see any connection between what you say and asteroids.

Am I missing something? Nostradamus prehaps?

I imagine it is something to do with the Book of Revelations (which is weird even by biblical standards) as our stripey friend is a self confessed bother of God.

ukdavej
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

Big Chris wrote:

My postcode starts DA13..... Does this mean it'll be passing closest to near where I live? Smile

I'd be worried if I were you Shock

Me? I'm in M28 so not the slightest bit concerned excellent!

David@FrankHarvey
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

steve_1979 wrote:
There's little need for concern. Even if an asteroids trajectory was going to hit Earth we now have the technology to stop it.

party time!

Since when has everything been 100% predictable? Add human error in? And I don't mean just getting two plus two wrong, I mean a major miscalculation due to flaws or drawbacks in what we rely on for all this data. Nothing is certain! That's way too close for my liking! Smile

Maybe the Mayans were on the track, but just a little bit wrong... Smile

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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

The_Lhc
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

The_Lhc wrote:

steve_1979 wrote:
FrankHarveyHiFi wrote:

This seems to have hints of "Melancholia" about it.... Shock

There's little need for concern. Even if an asteroids trajectory was going to hit Earth we now have the technology to stop it.

party time!

We have designed a spaceship that would fire a heavy payload at an asteroid at with sufficient force to knock it off course.

Oh good. Is there any danger of us actually building it? Because we only found out how close this thing was going to get a few months ago and that isn't really enough time to build a brand new untested space craft and get it to a successful intercept of an asteroid in that space of time before it's too late to make any difference. Those sort of missions are planned years, if not decades in advance.

And it seems, it may not even work...

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chebby
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

If this thing hit us it would most probably impact in an ocean and NASA reckon would be equivalant to an explosion of about 2.4 Megatons.

Not good but on the same scale as many surface H-bomb tests conducted in the 1950s and 60s by the USA, Russia and even Britain.

Not big enough to be an extinction event and puny by the standards of some of the biggest volcanic events that have occurred in human history.

Of course, if it hit a major population centre then we are all b######d because it would probably be assumed to be a pre-emptive nuclear attack and automatically  set off half the world's ICBMs to 'retaliate' against whatever their programmed targets currently are.

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steve_1979
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RE: Asteroid near miss on February the 15th

The_Lhc wrote:

steve_1979 wrote:
There's little need for concern. Even if an asteroids trajectory was going to hit Earth we now have the technology to stop it.

party time!

We have designed a spaceship that would fire a heavy payload at an asteroid at with sufficient force to knock it off course.

Oh good. Is there any danger of us actually building it? Because we only found out how close this thing was going to get a few months ago and that isn't really enough time to build a brand new untested space craft and get it to a successful intercept of an asteroid in that space of time before it's too late to make any difference. Those sort of missions are planned years, if not decades in advance.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has a Near Earth Object (NEO) deflecting program called 'Don Quijote' underway. It's planned to be launched and tested within four years but they also claim that if there was an emergency the project would be put on fast forward and could be ready within a matter of months if necessary.

 

It comprises of two spacecraft. An orbiter called Sancho which gathers and relays information about the asteroid and an impactor called Hidalgo which will crash into the asteroid at high speed to change its trajectory.

 

It's also worth noting that NASA did something similar with its 'Deep Impact' mission in 2005 which successfully collided a small impactor with a comet. The aim of this mission was to examine the resulting dust cloud and crater rather than to change the comets trajectory. But it did however also demonstrate that changing a comet or asteroids trajecty can already be achieved with our current level of space technology.

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