Dangerous Asteroid Rapidly Approaching Earth?

Oh well, time to put the kettle on and have a nice cup of tea.

How do we know 'he' is not a 'she'?

You have to have a really good telescope to determine the gender at this distance!

As difficult as it is to find these Near Earth Object, asteroids, finding them is not the hard part. Neither is the (yet to be done) engineering task of mitigating the risk by changing the trajectory of one of these missiles. The hard parts are to identify which big enough rock will actually impact in enough time to possibly do something about it. Then convince the right people that they should spend the resources to do something about it. We should not shout "WOLF" or "ASTEROID" too often in the process.

Just look at the MO of this poster.

Made you look at the web site he's pushing.

Actually, I did not because the web address didn't look very useful, so I went right to a search engine and looked for scholarly articles.

However, checking it out kind of sums up its academic credibility at just about what I had originally sized it up to be.

Until proven wrong (when it won't matter either way) my money's still on Yellowstone.

Scientists report Yellowstone supervolcano bigger than ...

Haha....I found a link to the orbital diagram but can't get it to open.....anybody who can maybe you could post it....

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=951+Gaspra&orb=1#orb

The rock shown in Nasa's NEOP page appears vaguely similar. Do all these asteroids come out of the same kit? Nah, after a second look, these are not the same object, but the "twin brother" objects shown in previous post (solar eagle) are forensically the same, even though the images are not the identical scale. I counted at least 20 points of identification within 40 seconds. I say hoax.

On the other hand, I would prefer being killed by an anonymous asteroid, to the one that has had its name up in lights.

I don't believe its a hoax at all. More than likely a gullibility indicator than a hoax. This rock was discovered this year. Do you really think that a closeup, well lit image revealing not just the shape but texture of this asteroid would be possible in the same year of discovery.

What are you smoking in that pipe?

I did get the applet to work and 951 Gaspra is in a stable orbit outside the radius of Mars. This orbit also is inclined with respect to planetary orbits. I think we can cancel the call to the fire department on this one.

Can't be.

One's a lot bigger.

Nice bit of work Rixter.

From what I could find on it, it's too early to determine anything. And it seems there is no chance of impact for at least the next two years- whew :)

*Sorry can't paste links in explorer for some reason.

The real danger to earth is the fear mongerers. So what are you/we going to do, to stop it hitting earth. Yes, I thought so, Nothing!

Don't worry about it, the aliens will shoot it down for you as they did over Russia last year and the glaziers will be back in business.

The inhabitants of earth are a bigger, more real danger to themselves than some stray meteor.

How big a danger is Ison? Which now seems to be 3 items and not just one comet.

I agree, put the kettle on.

Can we get this done before election day and put us out of our misery?

It won't be long now, within 48 hours we'll know if the wrong idiots or the right idiots were put into power.

At least we are guaranteed that the weather will be a shower of idiots with hot air blowing in across the country forming isolated pockets of BS.

Goody, I knew that asteroid insurance I took out would pay off some day.

I've got enough to worry about with the early snow here! Don't bother me with stuff I can't do anything about!

http://rt.com/news/201827-dangerous-asteroid-discovered-ur116/

Another dangerous male asteroid diverted by a modest bit of research (well done, Rixter).

Just think of how seldom we'd encounter these dangerous beasts if only more folks would do the same by NOT letting their adrenaline glands post unsubstantiated, unresearched, fear-mongering rubbish on the Internet.

Btw, did you know the word 'gullible' is not in the dictionary?

Three out of five people I tell that to say "Really??"

Bog help us.

The picture was incorrect, but the asteroid does indeed exist and is going to be be at least a near Earth pass....I suspect since no picture exists, that the stock photo was used as an example....

"But the good news is that the asteroid poses no threat to Earth for at least the next six years, Victor Shor, research associate at the Institute of Applied Astronomy told the Interfax news agency.

At the moment the closest part of 2014 UR116's orbit is 4.5 million kilometers from Earth. But this will change, so scientists are going to have to keep an eye on 2014 UR116 for years to come."

http://rt.com/news/201827-dangerous-asteroid-discovered-ur116/

At the rate we are going, the rock will bypass earth totally as there will be nothing left to destroy. We certainly don't need some foreign rock dropping by to spoil our fun now, do we?

I dunno, I think a few megatons of rock slamming into this planet at 30,000 kph would be a sight to behold. For a few milliseconds, anyway. Lucifer's Hammer.

Very few would even see it coming or happening. Too busy looking at the cell phones.

Cool chart. 99942 Apophis looks intriguing. Although the risk of either an Earth or a Moon impact is exceedingly low, it did for a time rank highest on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, at Level 4.

Were Apophis to collide with Earth head-on, its impact energy would roughly equal that of five million Tsar Bomba type nuclear explosions (pardon the sound track. It was dubbed at the time by Soviet sound engineers for public consumption and, at that filming distance, is not at all realistic in terms of either timing nor magnitude).

My figures are off, btw. WAY off. Brain fart.