Forget The Debt Ceiling — Traders Are Buzzing About The Gigantic Asteroid Barreling Towards Earth

TBI ^ | 1-8-2013 | Sam Ro

[blam]

ART CASHIN: Forget The Debt Ceiling — Traders Are Buzzing About The Gigantic Asteroid Barreling Towards Earth

Sam Ro
Jan. 8, 2013, 8:46 AM

With no major economic, earnings, or political news, yesterday turned into one of the most boring trading days in a very long time.

According to UBS's Art Cashin, this gave the New York Stock Exchange floor traders time to chat about various things.

One of those things: the gigantic asteroid heading toward earth.

From this morning's Cashin's Comments:

And You Thought The Debt Ceiling Was All You Had To Worry About – Trading was slow enough yesterday that traders had more than the usual allotment of time for chitchat. Quickly exhausting sports, politics and the rest of the usual roster, thinking and thoughts turned skyward.

They talked of the weekend news reports that an asteroid would be passing very, very near earth. How close was the key? Apparently, in mid-February, asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass within 21,000 miles of earth.

To put that in some perspective, the moon is 240,000 miles away and several GPS satellites orbit at 26,000 miles. So, the asteroid will come within orbits of satellites. No need to worry though, NASA assures us that their calculations show that it will not strike the earth. We're from the government and we're here to help you.

Let's hope NASA double-checked their math.

[who knows what evil?]

Got to go with Grumpy Cat on this one...whatever.

[who knows what evil?]

Come to think of it; in all those various end of the world scenarios down thru the years, isn't Australia the only thing left after the 'SHTF'?

Good call, there...

[djf]

Let’s hope a good-sized CME between now and then doesn’t tweak the orbit...

[djf]

Sorry...

CME = Coronal Mass Ejection

[silverleaf]

http://earthsky.org/space/asteroid-2012-da14-will-pass-very-close-to-earth-in-2013

[justa-hairyape]

I guess the Mayans were off by a couple months.

Actually the Mayan calendar was just an approximation. Sometimes the civilization ends earlier, sometimes later.

Definitely we need someone to make sure NASA did not do a metric/US conversion error. As they have in the past.

[Portcall24]

Those Mayan’s never could calculate calendars accurately. They always seemed to be off a couple of months.

[jpsb]

This is a three body problem (Earth, Moon, Asteroid) the math is pretty hairy on a 3 body problem, but it is solvable. So if NASA and the rest of the scientific community say near miss then it is a near miss, THIS TIME. However the asteroids’ orbit will be effected by passing so close to the earth, so who knows maybe next time?

[JimRed]

Maybe it will clear out some of the orbital junk that it up there.

And maybe it'll take out some of our GPS sats, incapacitating the young drivers who've never seen a folding road map!

[COBOL2Java]

Or DC.

Hey! I'm just across the river in Alexandria! >:-0

[oh8eleven]

Let's hope that NASA didn't use a mix of metric and English data...........
Ah, no /s tag but I'll assume you know that's exactly what happened in 1999:

"Metric mishap caused loss of NASA orbiter."
"NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement
while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation ..."

Not to worry though - it was replaced with another $125 million from the taxpayers' wallets.

[Kozak]

Well Hale- Bopp was pretty impressive, I’d love another comet like that.

[Red Badger]

$125 Million would fund the US government for about 15 minutes...................

[Red Badger]

Well Hale- Bopp was pretty impressive, I’d love another comet like that.

So would I.........

[Kozak]

Pretty sure he’s out of quarters....

[DYngbld]

But I'm sure that won't stop the usual nitwits from turning it into another end-of-the-world conspiracy theory.

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!!

[willyd]

I hope they have a better approach to physics than my High School Physics book did.

“All things being equal...what is the chance that an asteroid traveling through space...”

[pgkdan]

OK...well then...scratch that idea.

[GraceG]

Would that be the NASA that forgot to convert from feet to meters? Or would that be the NASA that is shilling global warming and muslim outreach? Or maybe that’s the NASA without launch capability to get a person to the space station?

[pgkdan]

And maybe it'll take out some of our GPS sats, incapacitating the young drivers who've never seen a folding road map!

ON NO!!!! Some of us old timers hate those damned folding maps. Although they're better than the street map books where your map gets continued 8 pages later.