Posted on 03/19/2013 7:28:06 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA chief Charles Bolden has advice on how to handle a large asteroid headed toward New York City: Pray.
That's about all the United States - or anyone for that matter - could do at this point about unknown asteroids and meteors that may be on a collision course with Earth, Bolden told lawmakers at a U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee hearing on Tuesday.
An asteroid estimated to be have been about 55 feet in diameter exploded on February 15 over Chelyabinsk, Russia, generating shock waves that shattered windows and damaged buildings. More than 1,500 people were injured.
Later that day, a larger, unrelated asteroid discovered last year passed about 17,200 miles from Earth, closer than the network of television and weather satellites that ring the planet.
The events "serve as evidence that we live in an active solar system with potentially hazardous objects passing through our neighborhood with surprising frequency," said Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat.
"We were fortunate that the events of last month were simply an interesting coincidence rather than a catastrophe," said Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, who called the hearing to learn what is being done and how much money is needed to better protect the planet.
NASA has found and is tracking about 95 percent of the largest objects flying near Earth, those that are .62 miles or larger in diameter.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“If it were aimed for a liberal crap hole like NYC or San Francisco, what would be the down side?”
It could explode over them making huge amounts of radiation raining down on those cities and we could end up with 100 foot tall homosexuals!
You called it. How much do you wanna wager?
$10!!!!
You mean NYC is NOT the center of the universe?
‘Cause Perry stood up to ‘The One’ and he got all butthurt.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
Hahahahaha
(Shh. Don’t encourage him!)
Odds of a 1 in a billion years event happening in the next 50: 1 out of 20 million.
Not likely.
And within 50 to 100 years, we’ll probably have the tech to do something.
Assuming we dont’ destroy ourselves with technology of course.
that would be a good choice too.
It's worse than that: NASA has found and is tracking about 95 percent of the largest objects flying near Earth, those that are .62 miles or larger in diameter.
So, they are tracking 95% of those .62 lies in diameter and above, but they don't mention those tiny ones, of say a mere half mile across.
I don't expect that we could do anything about one anyway, but them pretending that they have any handle on it whatsoever is typical government teet-sucking BS.
still might be worth it.
We have the knowledge and resources to stop it but spend it all fighting each other and hoarding material crap for ourselves.
I've always said there's nothing “supernatural” about God. “He” shows up everywhere and in everything around us within this reality. Not a “man in the sky” but more of a governing force that ties every living thing, action and object in our Universe together. The lessons in the Bible are through symbolic stories from people who were able to see the “big picture” quite clearly.
When you see it, you realize the “sins” simply upset the balance of the system and will eventually result in “judgment” for all. Not by some “man up there” judging you, but simply by negative consequences to our own reality caused by interconnected actions. Unfortunately too many people today are turned off by the supernatural aspects of the Bible (since science mocks them) and ignore the real symbolic lessons.
I wish I could remember which FReeperette has on her home page a cartoon of a girl on a hill with a baseball bat squaring off with an incoming asteroid.
I’d post it here, I would.
I thought they wrote 62 miles! How about using 0.62? My old eyes didn't catch that tiny decimal point in the original article.
;-)
That’s why it’s good practice to put a leading zero before a decimal point, as you did.
Moot.
Given it is NASA, I take it we should know which direction Mecca is when we pray? /sarc
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