So you're telling me there's a chance. Yeah!
Posted on 03/03/2012 9:46:28 PM PST by LibWhacker
To avert a new apocalypse – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint, or big guns. The tough part of either scheme is that time has long run out to build a spaceship for any operation.
NASA confirms the 60-meter (197-feet) asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months.
The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower than the geosynchronous orbit kept by the Google Maps satellite.
Fireworks and watercolors
With the asteroid zooming that low, it will be too late to do anything with it besides trying to predict its final destination and the consequences of impact.
A spaceship is needed, experts agree. It could shoot the rock down or just crash into it, either breaking the asteroid into debris or throwing it off course.
“We could paint it,” says NASA expert David Dunham.
Paint would affect the asteroid’s ability to reflect sunlight, changing its temperature and altering its spin. The asteroid would stalk off its current course, but this could also make the boulder even more dangerous when it comes back in 2056, Aleksandr Devaytkin, the head of the observatory in Russia’s Pulkovo, told Izvestia.
Spaceship impossible?
Whatever the mission, building a spaceship to deal with 2012 DA14 will take two years – at least.
The asteroid has proven a bitter discovery. It has been circling in orbit for three years already, crossing Earth’s path several times, says space analyst Sergey Naroenkov from the Russian Academy of Sciences. It seems that spotting danger from outer space is still the area where mere chance reigns, while asteroid defense systems exist only in drafts.
Still, prospects of meeting 2012 DA14 are not all doom and gloom.
“The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most part of it will never reach the planet’s surface,” remarks Dunham.
But if the entire asteroid is to crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia. This is almost the size of Luxembourg. In today’s case, the destination of the asteroid is yet to be determined.
...IOW, this asteroid is approximately EIGHT times (at least twice in each of three dimensions) more massive than the Barringer object that made Meteor/Barringer Crater — enough to make a crater eight times the size. If it hit in, say, Chicago, the crater would be roughly two miles across (sq root of 8, 2.828427125 times .75 miles), and the shock wave would knock down everything else for many miles in all directions.
Of course, we’d better not take my word for it...
Interesting read. Same technology could be used to pull dead satellites out of orbit.
Based on what I have read we’ll probably get hit with an asteroid that we won’t see coming before we ever develop any technology to deal them.
No worries. The target is assured.
Who sucks more than the people in Washinton D.C.?
>>I am not a physicist, but seems to me a nuke blast in deep space does not have the blast affects one would have in an atmospheric enviornment as there is no atmosphere to compress. Perhaps the energy would nudge the rock into another orbit of the sun but I don’t think it would pulverize it.
True, without an atmosphere, most of the destructiveness of the missile will be radiation and heat unless the meteor is impacted and the warhead buries itself a bit. But the warhead would have to be hardened to do this, all of which is doable.
Can you imagine the Cold War arms race being considered the savior of humanity on this score? This is precisely why the meteor/comet impact issue gets soft pedaled in the MSM. Were it not for comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter in 1989, we’d still be blithely awaiting a klondiking by the Gods.
bttt
Yes, I’m aware that ICBMs can’t get into orbit. That is why I was speculating that an ICBM would have to hit the rock awfully low, actually in our atmosphere, and I was wondering what repercussions you’d get from that. It’s probably not a good scenario!
EMP would blow out a ton of electronics for one.
Hey, folks. Don't worry about it. This stuff isn't rocket science or anything ... oh. wait. it is.
Never mind.
Hot fudge Fridae?
* * *
You sent shivers up my back! Stop that! ;o)
You need to say that with little quotie hand gestures:
END TIMES PING LIST PING
more festivities evidently looming . . .
More sobering asteroid thing than usual. Projected to fly by the earth at the distance of Google earth’s satellites.
At least I didn’t say “Hammerfall.”
If it were going to impact the ocean, the ocean could be predeformed so as to create a pocket for it to be absorbed into as it struck, such that the effects of a tidal wave forming would be greatly diminished.
That is true and the tech can be used for dead satellites. The planet is in a middle of a shooting gallery asteroids and comets coming at all directions.NASA has been falling behind their goal in detecting rocks from space.Congress has mandated that NASA discover 90 percent of all near-Earth objects 140 meters in diameter or greater by 2020. The most alarming thing about this is the United States is the only country that currently has an operating survey/detection program.
Or second defense scenario, paste holographic images of Michelle Obama’s face in front of it, and it will disintegrate into dust.
Of possible interest pings..
If it were going to impact the ocean, the ocean could be predeformed so as to create a pocket for it to be absorbed into as it struck, such that the effects of a tidal wave forming would be greatly diminished.
Followed by the opposite (real) Fast Freddie to move the water the other way.
I’m already guilty of hoping it hits a certain neighborhood on planet Earth.
;’)
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