Asteroid Collision Claim

Terms of Site

    Last-Modified:  01/10/06 09:56     -    

" LEARN  MORE,  BE  MORE "    

The Moon, heavily scared by impacts from asteroids. The Earth also suffered similar attacks but the environmental changes have covered up all the evidence.

ASTEROID 1950 DA    ASTEROID 2002 NT7

 ASTEROID TO HIT EARTH 

BBC            The Moon

  ♫ SURF&LISTEN  ♫ 

ASTEROIDS - also called minor planet, or planetoids, any of a host of small rocky bodies, about 1,000 km or less in diameter, that orbit the Sun primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is because of their small size and large numbers relative to the nine major planets that asteroids are also called minor planets. The two designations are frequently used interchangeably, though dynamicists, astronomers who study individual objects with dynamically interesting orbits or groups of objects with similar orbital characteristics, generally use the term minor planet, whereas those who study the physical properties of such objects usually refer to them as asteroids.

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. 

What is an Asteroid?

An asteroid is just like any of the bodies revolving around the Sun; mini-planets if you like. They are probably made up of the same stuff of most other bodies in our solar system,  just that they are much smaller. Some have diameters of up to 500 miles and then some only 100 meters; the largest asteroids are called planetoids. 

Somebody asked how are rogue asteroids sited. How would I know?  But if I did, what might be a good idea in order to find out, is to take a decent and huge telescope, probably a old one, as a new instrument would cost too much, a 36 inch one would do. 

Asteroid Moments Before Strike?

A stellar telescope is able to move around [360 degrees] and up and down, so that it can pin point various objects in the sky. It can also move mechanically with time or in sync with the orbit of the Earth. The idea then is to set the telescope in motion with the Earth's rotation and take three or more pictures of a small section of space, out of thousands of small sections of space.  Whilst moving in tandem with the spinning of the Earth on its axis, any picture will show all the 'stars' plus any that are not fixed. 

If you have not got a computer that can evaluate this information, what you do is ' blink '. Blinking is taking two shots of the same piece of sky using the telescope that is moving in sync with the Earth's rotation and arrange it so that your computer will view both pictures aligned, one at a time, every half second or so. Any foreign body that is not moving in sync with the normal heavenly motions will show up quite clearly as a moving spot of light.

If you have a computer program though, it can take evidence of these spots of light, and show up those, if any,  that have not stayed 'still'. 

Relative to us, stars actually stay still, it is the Earth that moves, along with other planets, but the movements of these are well known, so the computer can eliminate these. The computer then informs the user that there may be some kind of anomaly, such as an asteroid out there in this particular section.

Asteroids come mainly from the Asteroid Belt which is between the 'near' planets and the 'far' planets. The near planets are Mercury; Venus; Earth; and Mars. Then we have the Asteroids and then the 'far' planets being Jupiter,  then Saturn, Uranus etc. Because Jupiter is so big, its diameter is nearly 143,000 kilometers, its gravity force is very large and on occasions it pulls an asteroid out from its 'normal orbit'. The orbit of this asteroid then changes from what was nearly circular, to that of an ellipse. The ellipse is also usually quite acute, having a long major axis and a small minor axis. To be fair Jupiter does suck in quite a few of these lumps of rock, that crash onto its own surface, which is good for the rest of us. 

Recently a huge group of asteroids were seen from here impacting into Jupiter. The explosive fall out from these hits were as big as the Earth itself and had these asteroids hit us, we would not be on the Internet anymore.

When the computer looks at the pictures of the section and finds a spot of light that is moving in a path not previously recognized, it brings it to the users attention. The human observer will then take greater note of this particular object and area. But as they say that there are less than six humans looking into the sky for these potential hazards at any one time, it is no real shock to realize that some are not seen at all, until it is too late. But the word soon gets round so to speak, and other observatories take a better look at that particular piece of sky.

Various bits of information are discovered and evaluated by the computer, astronomers can do it but it takes much much longer. It is with this information most everything can be calculated about this body and whether the moving mass will hit us, or any other planet for that matter. The information needed comes in seven parts. 

1]     The size of the major axis of the ellipse of the asteroid's orbit.

2]     The size of the minor axis of the ellipse of the asteroids orbit.

3]     The vertical tilt of the axis in comparison with the path of the Earth's orbit.

4]     The horizontal tilt of the axis in comparison with the path of the Earth's orbit.

5]     The orientation of the orbit in comparison with the Sun's position.

6     How far around the path of the orbit it is at any particular time.

7]    And finally, the time.

A computer can take all this information and with some fine tuning can quite accurately predict when and where a asteroid will be at any given time. The only problem is that factors can change. 

Let us consider that 2002 NT7 was once upon a time quite happily orbiting the Sun along with all its other buddies in the Asteroid Belt,  when it was dragged quite unceremoniously into a different stellar pathway by Jupiter, or by colliding with another asteroid. Asteroid 2002 NT7 may have been unsettled a thousand or a million years ago, in fact it may have skimmed Earth in it's distance past already, in fact Earth may have changed it's path so that it may or may not lead to it hitting us in the very near future. Eventually though if Earth's orbit crosses any orbit or path of another space body, it clearly is only a matter of time before they will meet. Notwithstanding those other factors though, like Bruce Willis flying up there and pushing it away.

 

The Moon is a satellite of the Earth but due to its size and composition, the Moon is sometimes classified as a terrestrial "planet" along with the other  inner near planets

The Moon, of course, has been known since prehistoric times. It is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. As the Moon orbits around the Earth once per lunar month, the angle between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun changes; we see this as the cycle of the Moon's phases. The time between successive new moons is 29.5 days (709 hours), slightly different from the Moon's orbital period (measured against the stars) since the Earth moves a significant distance in its orbit around the Sun in that time.

The Moon orbits 384,400 km from Earth, and its diameter is 3476 km. 

Other Planets

Eys = Earth Years

Km = Kilometers

b = Billion

Planet X (Click)

Planet X

Planet X

It has recently been discovered that the Earth has FIVE other natural satellites going around it. Pieces of rock about 10-15 km across is orbiting Earth just like the Moon. It is presumed that they are possibly asteroids that have approached the Earth at such an angle that it has gone into orbit instead of crashing into our planet.

Meteor   -  A streak of light seen in the night sky when a meteoroid, an interplanetary rock or dust particle,  enters and burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere. A decaying comet gradually produces a meteor stream of meteoroids around its orbit. When the Earth passes through a meteor stream, an often spectacular meteor shower is observed. A meteorite is a large piece of interplanetary debris, iron or stone; mass usually over 100 kg,  that falls to the earth’s surface.

DIEMOS, a satellite of Mars that probably was once an asteroid.

Sometimes an asteroid can have it's own satellite circling it. These are known as binary asteroids. Probably there are even satellites circling the satellites.

Telescope An optical instrument that produces a magnified image of distant objects.

The refracting telescope, invented (1608) by Lippershey in Holland and developed (1609) by *Galileo as an astronomical instrument has a converging long-focus objective lens. The resulting image is magnified by the short-focus eyepiece to produce the final image. An example is the Keplerian telescope. Refractors are also used as terrestrial telescopes, usually containing an additional lens or prism to form an upright image. The first reflecting telescope, produced by *Newton (1668), uses a concave, usually paraboloid, mirror of long focal length to collect the light. This primary mirror reflects the light into a secondary optical system, which in turn reflects it into a short-focus eyepiece. The eyepiece lenses produce an image that can be viewed, photographed, or studied using electronic equipment. Depending on the secondary optics, reflectors are called Gregorian, Newtonian, Cassegrain, or coudé telescopes. 

An asteroid can travel at over THIRTY kilometers per second. If it weighs a million tons at a standstill, its kinetic weight at this speed is almost immeasurable. Most asteroid, whilst quite dense rock are in fact quite brittle and will smash and break. An impact will turn the asteroid and the surrounding impact site into dust like fragments that will be reflected into the air. Imagine if an asteroid was so strong that it could not be damaged, at 30 kms per second, weighing a million tons, it would probably punch a hole right through the Earth like a bullet.

© Foogle Business 2006

CONTACT US

Futuristic TV Play

At anyone time, there are less than SIX people watching the heavens looking out for foreign bodies on collision with our planet.  Most watchers are amateurs and one watcher has discovered over one thousand anomalous sightings.

The last most significant Extinction Level Event, happened over 64 million years ago, but several small ones have happened that have still changed the path of Humankind. We are well overdue for another big one.

SITE MAP TO THIS SITE

HOLD MOUSE OVER IMAGE         *          LEARN  MORE,  BE MORE

Last-Modified:  01/10/06 09:56                                       LINKS