Thread: Potential Doomsday Asteroid will pass closer than some telecom Satellites, on 2/15

If their calculations are off just a hair in the wrong direction BLAMMO! I wonder who will get creamed?

Originally Posted by Zaphod

If their calculations are off just a hair in the wrong direction BLAMMO! I wonder who will get creamed?

Hopefully, Azza's house. If it does, I hope the kids he has locked up in the basement get out first.

I hope it hits before my mortgage is due.....

I hope it hits the moon and knocks it half its distance to us so that it looks huge in the sky at night.

I had a dream once that there is a tiny Earth like Moon on the other side of our moon that we have never seen, but it's inhabited by mm tall creatures that are very intelligent.

Oh oh, another near doomsday. lol

Everyone into the bunker, don't push there is plenty of room in the back.

I am showing my age with this one. Back when the first space station, Skylab, was coming down the gubbermint could not really shay where it would crash. The fashion statement of the day were dufus's and freeze dried hippies wearing hard hats wherever they went. It was pretty funny.

lol at the reported who said "does global warming have anything to do with this"

A meteor shower hit russia. They say it isnt connected to the meteor that will miss us today. But what a coincidence....

? Russian Meteor Shower Linked to DA14 Asteroid? Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!


It was like a scene from the Armageddon movie

Experts are pondering whether a meteorite shower which caused panic in Russia, injuring over 500 people, devastating buildings and wiping out the cell phone network, is linked to today?s fly-by of DA14, the ?city killer? asteroid that NASA has assured will not hit the earth.

The meteor shower, which was dramatically captured by numerous people on cell phone videos, was described by some as ?like a scene from the Armageddon movie,? with YouTube clips showing a trail appearing across the sky before a dazzling bright object appears followed by loud booms.

The rocks crashed at around 9:20am local time, mainly over the sparsely populated city of Chelyabinsk, 900 miles east of Moscow. 20,000 rescue workers have been sent to aid recovery efforts, with the full extent of the damage not yet known. Windows were smashed and buildings were devastated, including the 6,000 square feet roof of a zinc factory, as some residents feared ?doomsday? had arrived.

The main chunk of the meteor fell into a frozen lake, creating a huge hole in the ice. Experts are still undecided whether the event was caused by a meteor shower or a single meteor, as well as whether the damage was caused by the shock wave or actual debris, although residents reported fireballs crashing to the ground.

Space experts are divided on whether the meteor is connected to today?s fly-by of asteroid DA14, which will pass within 17,200 miles of the earth?s surface, closer than many orbiting satellites.

The European Space Agency (ESA) put out a message on its official Twitter account claiming that the meteor shower was not debris from the DA14 asteroid.

However, Tatiana Bordovitsina, an astronomy professor at Tomsk State University in western Siberia, told RIA Novosti that the meteor, ?could have been debris preceding the asteroid.?

Professor Ian Crawford of Birkbeck University told Sky News that, ?it was too early to tell if this incident was connected to the asteroid passing by the earth tonight,? but added that if meteorites were traveling with the asteroid, they would be several hours ahead of it.

Curtin University asteroid expert Phil Bland told an Australian website, ?Is it connected to the flyby? A lot of folks would say ?no?. Personally, I?ve always kind of liked the idea that there are streams of asteroid debris ? so you can have smaller stuff that precede and trail a bigger object. It seems like an awful big coincidence if it?s not connected.?

Simon O?Toole, an astronomer at the Australian Astronomical Observatory, thinks that there is unlikely to be a connection. ?As pointed out elsewhere, DA14 is still half a million kilometres away, travelling at 8km per second, for a start! Could it be part of the asteroid that has broken away and reached earth already? This seems unlikely to me,? he said.

Dr Stephen Lowry, planetary scientist at the University of Kent, doubted the connection but remarked that the meteorite shower was ?an incredible conincidence.?

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reacted to the incident by warning that the ?whole planet? is vulnerable to near-earth objects, while nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky even claimed the event was actually ?the test of a new weapon by the Americans,? adding that, ?[Secretary of state John] Kerry warned [foreign minister Sergei] Lavrov on Monday ? that there would be such a provocation and that it might affect Russia.?

Officials issued a statement assuring that no nuclear sites had been hit by the meteor and that no radiation leaks had been recorded.

Watch more videos of the meteorite shower below.

BBC News - Meteor strike injures hundreds in central Russia

Meteorite hits central Russia, more than 500 people hurt

By Natalia Shurmina and Andrey Kuzmin | Reuters ? 2 hrs 6 mins ago

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• Russian meteorite caught on tape; injuries reportedKABC ? Los Angeles 0:56A meteor hit over Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring ?

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• View PhotoThe trail of a falling object is ?
  
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• View PhotoA man identifying himself as Viktor ?

CHELYABINSK, Russia (Reuters) - More than 500 people were injured when a meteorite shot across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, sending fireballs crashing to Earth, shattering windows and damaging buildings.
People heading to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave according to a Reuters correspondent in the industrial city 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow.
A fireball blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail in its wake which could be seen as far as 200 km (125 miles) away in Yekaterinburg. Car alarms went off, windows shattered and mobile phone networks were interrupted.
"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," said Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains.
"I felt like I was blinded by headlights," he said.
No fatalities were reported but President Vladimir Putin, who was due to host Finance Ministry officials from the Group of 20 nations in Moscow, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev were informed.
A local ministry official said such incidents were extremely rare and Friday's events might have been linked to an asteroid the size of an Olympic swimming pool due to pass Earth at a distance of 27,520 km (17,100 miles) but this was not confirmed.
Russia's space agency Roscosmos said the meteorite was travelling at a speed of 30 km (19 miles) per second and that such events were hard to predict. The Interior Ministry said the meteorite explosion had caused a sonic boom.
Russia's Emergencies Ministry said 514 people had sought medical help, mainly for light injuries caused by flying glass, and that 112 of those were kept in hospital. Search groups were set up to look for the remains of the meteorite.
"There have never been any cases of meteorites breaking up at such a low level over Russia before," said Yuri Burenko, head of the Chelyabinsk branch of the Emergencies Ministry.
WINDOWS BREAK, FRAMES BUCKLE
Windows were shattered on Chelyabinsk's central Lenin Street and some of the frames of shop fronts buckled.
A loud noise, resembling an explosion, rang out at around 9.20 a.m. (12:20 a.m. ET). The shockwave could be felt in apartment buildings in the industrial city's center.
"I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend," said Andrei, a local resident who did not give his second name. "Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shockwave that smashed windows."
A wall was damaged at the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant but a spokeswoman said there was no environmental threat.
Although such events are rare, a meteorite is thought to have devastated an area of more than 2,000 sq km (1,250 miles) in Siberia in 1908, smashing windows as far as 200 km (125 miles) from the point of impact.
The Emergencies Ministry described Friday's events as a "meteor shower in the form of fireballs" and said background radiation levels were normal. It urged residents not to panic.
Chelyabinsk city authorities urged people to stay indoors unless they needed to pick up their children from schools and kindergartens. They said what sounded like a blast had been heard at an altitude of 10,000 meters (32,800 feet).
The U.S. space agency NASA has said an asteroid known as 2012 DA14, about 46 meters in diameter, would have an encounter with Earth closer than any asteroid since scientists began routinely monitoring them about 15 years ago.
Television, weather and communications satellites fly about 500 miles higher. The moon is 14 times farther away.
(Additional reporting by Natalia Shurmina in Yekaterinburg and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Writing by Alexei Anishchuk and Timothy Heritage, Editing by Michael Holden)

I'm almost more scared of an meteorite hitting a satellite. Which will turn into more space junk damaging other satellites or future space vehicles. Imagine the possible domino effect of one satellite getting shedded into thousands of parts, the parts then collide into other satellites causing more parts to collide with other satellites.

It wasn't as devastating as Tunguska but that is a rare thing anyway.

Meteorite

scary but fascinating.

So what can we do to prevent the worse from happening? other than been worried to death

there is clearly only one way to survive this... steroids

I am actually amazed this doesn't happen more with all the crap floating around up there.

Originally Posted by dogsoldier

I am actually amazed this doesn't happen more with all the crap floating around up there.

I saw the explanation on one of the shows on the Science channel. The bigger planets, especially Jupiter, clean most of the little objects with the massive gravity they have. Some years back that comet that struck Jupiter was the televised example. The comet was in one piece until it was ripped to pieces in the planet's gravity before inpact.

The asteroids and comets that come close or into the center of the solar system have orbits that avoid the outer planets.

It took a few minutes for me to remember the name of the comet.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (astronomy) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, <img alt="Shoemaker-Levy 9, Comet [Credit: NASA/STScI/H.A. Weaver and T.E. Smith]" src="http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/84/75384-003-AB605BB6.jpg" width="100" height="21">comet whose shattered nucleus crashed into Jupiter over the period of July 16?22, 1994. The cataclysmic event, the first collision between two solar system bodies ever observed, was monitored from Earth-based telescopes worldwide, the Hubble Space Telescope and other Earth-orbiting instruments, and the Galileo spacecraft, which was en route to Jupiter.
On March 25, 1993, a previously unknown comet positioned close to Jupiter was noted by Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy in photographs taken at Palomar Observatory in California. Most unusual was its appearance?it comprised at least a dozen cometary nuclei lined up like glowing pearls on a string. Week after week the nuclei spread farther apart until a total of 21 fragments were visible. An analysis of their common orbit revealed that the original comet, which had been revolving about the Sun, had grazed Jupiter?s atmosphere and nearly crashed into it on July 8, 1992. At that time, tidal gravitational forces from the giant planet had broken the nucleus into many pieces, which were captured by Jupiter?s gravity and thrown into an elongated two-year orbit around the planet. Astronomers calculated that the new orbit would bring the pieces back to Jupiter in July 1994.
<img alt="Shoemaker-Levy 9, Comet: effects of collision with Jupiter [Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope Comet Team]" src="http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/83/75383-003-AA2D9620.jpg" width="100" height="80">The train of fragments from Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter?s atmosphere with a velocity of 216,000 km (134,000 miles) per hour beginning July 16, 1994. They all hit the unobservable side beyond the limb of Jupiter as seen from Earth, but the planet?s 10-hour rotation quickly brought each impact site into view. Separated in time by an average of seven to eight hours, each fragment plunged deeply into the Jovian atmosphere, leaving conspicuous scars aligned in a zone near latitude 44? S. Astronomers labeled the individual fragments with capital letters in order of arrival. Fragment G, with an estimated diameter of 3?4 km (1.9?2.5 miles), was probably the largest and heaviest. It left a dark multiringed blemish twice as large as Earth?s diameter. Its impact delivered energy equivalent to several trillion tons of TNT?hundreds of times the yield of the world?s supply of nuclear weapons. Each impact transformed quickly into an immense bubble of hot gas that glowed warmly in infrared images of Jupiter as it expanded for a few days in the atmosphere. The planet-girdling string of dark brown bruises, assumed to be fine organic cometary dust, remained visible for weeks; it faded slowly into a new, narrow belt induced by Jupiter?s strong winds.

^^^ this is a great video

No this is: