Asteroid 2002 NT7

We have, for years now being ranting on about the global environment and how we believe through any myriad of reasons that the sentient inhabitants of this planet, known as Humanity, may not live past the year 2100, because we will not be able to evolve quick enough to adapt to the varying climatic and atmospheric conditions. Well we are sorry, we were wrong. It is going to happen on Friday February 1st  2019, or at least that is the possibility, as a huge lump of rock that maybe over 10 billion years old, may hit Earth. The asteroid, and you will need more than Preparation H, may strike and it is thought that it may land in the middle of the Sahara Desert.  In any event it is quite exiting knowing that a huge chunk of life as we know it may be destroyed, or not. 

Asteroid 2002 NT7

NASA dismisses asteroid collision claim

The Guardian newspaper in the UK has declared that NASA, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, calculate that the  chances of the recently discovered 3 kilometer long asteroid which was forecast to strike Earth, is now minimal to do so.

An asteroid that hit what is now New Mexico, 65 million years ago, is believed to have killed off the dinosaurs. Why did nobody warn us about that one? In other articles and pages we have written we have often equated science-fiction with science-fact but yet again we have been let down. In every fictional Extinction   Level   Event scenario the government never tells the people about potential global disasters. But they have about this, why are they not afraid about all the looting, mugging and murdering that will go on around the world now?

The Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik, a dinosaur that was not killed off, and who campaigns for the government to take asteroid threats seriously, said 2002 NT7 was the most dangerous object yet seen in space. "There's a good chance this particular object won't hit us but we know that a large object will hit us sooner or later. This is the closest approach we have seen so far," he said.

"It does sound like a science fiction story and I may sound like one of these guys who walks up and down with a sandwich board saying the end of the world is nigh, but the end is nigh."

Last month it was reported that a tiny asteroid [ 2002 MN ], the size of a football pitch missed Earth by only 75,000 miles - less than one-third of the distance to the moon. Nobody knew until three days later. Scientists said if it had hit a populated area, it would have released as much energy as a large nuclear weapon.

Some years ago I was driving my car and saw a huge ball of fire cross the sky. It lasted for only 5 - 10 seconds and was gone. I heard nothing about it in the news and I often wonder what it was. I can only imagine that it was some astral body skimming our atmosphere but was it the size of a car, a house, a football pitch or the size of Oklahoma? 

If it misses during 2019, it will have another chance during the years 2035 and 2051. However,  astronomers are keen to emphasize that the chance of a collision is extremely unlikely.

Asteroid 2002 NT7 is still millions of miles away, but it  traveling at nearly 30,000 meters each second. Asteroid 2002 NT7, 2km wide, was first observed by the Linear search program in New Mexico on July 9.

Asteroids (minor planets; planetoids) A number of small bodies that revolve around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (in the asteroid belt). The size of the bodies varies from the largest, Ceres (with a diameter of about 1000km), to objects less than 1km in diameter. It is estimated that there are about 10 bodies with diameters in excess of 300km and some 200 bodies with diameters over 100km.

The Sun.  The star at the center of the solar system. A typical main-sequence dwarf star,  the sun is some 149,600,000 km from Earth. It has a diameter of about 1,392,000 km and a mass of 1.9 x 1030 kg. Hydrogen and helium are the primary constituents (about 75% hydrogen, 25% helium), with less than 1% of heavier elements. In the central core, some 400,000 km in diameter, hydrogen is converted into helium by thermonuclear reactions, which generate vast quantities of energy. This energy is radiated into space and provides the earth with all the light and heat necessary to have created and maintained life. The surface of the sun, the photosphere, forms the boundary between its opaque interior and its transparent atmosphere. It is here that sunspots occur. Above the photosphere is the chromosphere and above this the corona, which extends tenuously into interplanetary space.

The Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik, is the member for Montgomeryshire and is a supporter of the organization that tracks unwelcome foreign bodies, Spaceguard UK.

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Did you know that the universe is slowly getting dimmer. As all the heavenly bodies move out further away from each other and as less stars are formed, to replace those that have died; eventually there will be no stars left. But do not worry, well not in the next 30 Billion years anyway.