MarkMiller

Title
Asteroid will swing by, but won't stop

Link
Asteroid will swing by, but won't stop - Yahoo! News
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Excerpt

By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
Thu Jan 24, 10:33 PM ET



LOS ANGELES - An asteroid at least 500 feet long will make a rare close pass by Earth next week, but there is no chance of an impact, scientists reported Thursday.

The object, known as 2007 TU24, is expected to whiz by Earth on Tuesday with its closest approach at 334,000 miles, or about 1.4 times the distance of Earth to the moon.

The nighttime encounter should be bright enough for medium-sized telescopes to get a glimpse, said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which tracks potentially dangerous space rocks.

However, next week's asteroid pass "has no chance of hitting, or affecting, Earth," Yeomans said.

An actual collision of a similar-sized object with Earth occurs on average every 37,000 years.

Spotted last October by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, 2007 TU24 is estimated to be between 500 feet and 2,000 feet long. The next time an asteroid this size will fly this close to Earth will be in 2027.

Scientists plan to point the Goldstone radar telescope in California and the Arecibo radar telescope in Puerto Rico at the asteroid and observe its path before and after its closest approach to Earth. Researchers will use instruments to measure its rotation and composition.

The 2007 TU24 rendezvous comes a day before another asteroid is projected to pass close to Mars.

Scientists have effectively ruled out a collision between the Red Planet and the asteroid 2007 WD5, estimating it will pass at a distance of more than 16,000 miles from the Martian surface. Initial observations of the Mars-bound asteroid put the odds of an impact at 1 in 25, but scientists later dropped the odds to 1 in 10,000.

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On the Net:

Near Earth Object Program: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

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Comment:

Uhmmmm........OH SHIT!!!!!! That's pretty damn close!

Tonight! Tuesday January 29th!

Richterscale

A couple thoughts come to mind...

1) They only discovered this object last October? That really doesn't give us much time to do anything...

2) They discovered it in October, and the first we hear about it is Jan 24, five days before the event?

3) How late, if ever, would they have waited to inform the public if it WAS going to impact earth?

4) The statement "The next time an asteroid this size will fly this close to Earth will be in 2027." is utter bullshit and wishful thinking based on the sentence just prior to it.

__________________
Google Sibel Edmonds

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TrueBlueAmerican

Israel has accused the comet of making anti semitic remarks and shooting space rocks over its border. Air strikes are planned. The comet claims that its orbit around the Earth is for purely peaceful purposes.

Lolli

Why what did you want to plan?

cheapseats

"No chance of an impact." What paltry non-news is THAT, when we've got THIS:

A TEN TON spy satellite has lost power and is falling to earth, per CNN.

It's top-secret, so information about it is classified...sorry.

Except for this: it's 10-and-a-half tons, the size of a small bus, perhaps containing toxic hydrozine (sp) rocket fuel, and will hit earth sometime in late March.

Stay inside, stand in the street, take a trip...take your pick, and best of luck to us.

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Richterscale

Well, that's the question of what would you do if you found out you only had 'X' amount of time to live. If it was going to mean extinction, I would want as much time as possible to spend with loved ones and friends.

Or say, they calculated that it was going to hit Kansas, and the destruction would wipe out the entire central U.S., and severely damage the rest of the lower 48 and parts of Canada and Mexico.... Would you just say screw it, and let those people die, or work as a world to save as many lives as possible?

I didn't mean 'plan' as in ''Armageddon' save the world from destruction science fiction sillyness. perhaps i could have worded that better.

__________________
Google Sibel Edmonds

"How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?" - Frank Zappa

TrueBlueAmerican

There is less than a 1 in 100,000 chance that the satellite will hit anyone. If the probability drops below 1 in 100,000 then NASA is obligated to intervene.

Richterscale

__________________
Google Sibel Edmonds

"How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?" - Frank Zappa

gonzo

Dang, I missed this one in my Shooting Stars thread, lol.