asteroid

[theist 1]

I was wrong. I thought it was five tears but it is 25 years until the rock will either hit the earth or miss. Heck, I'll be dead by then anyway so I've no reason to worry. Scientists give it a 1 in 40 chance.

 

 

 

 

 

London - The Astronomers were doubtful that the asteroid could hit the Earth in 2029 and the people felt panicky. They felt that 2004 MN4 had a 1-in-40 chance of a collision on Friday, April 13, 2029.

 

The Astronomers gave it a rating of 4 on the 1-10 Torino scale used to gauge the threats posed by asteroids and comets.

 

The asteroid is estimated to be about 1,400 feet (430 meters) long. Though that's not large enough to create a mass-extinction event, some scientists compared to the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

 

Dr. Raj Baldev, Cosmo Theorist from India has a different opinion, he said, "The asteroid loses its size during its travel and it could not sustain the original length of 430 meters while crossing nearer to the Earth." But if the asteroid were to hit the wrong place at the wrong time, it could cause a giant tsunami wave or deliver a nuclear-scale blast.

 

Fortunately, the alert led astronomers to check their archives for images of the asteroid that might have gone unnoticed at the time.

 

Guided by the latest data about 2004 MN4's orbit, the Arizona-based Spacewatch Project spotted the rock on five images made back on March 15, said Donald Yeomans, Manager of the Near Earth Object Program.

 

 

 

 

[Kulapavana 0]

long time ago I have read a real good book (fiction) about such an event. It was called "Hammer of God" or something like that.

[Guest guest]

And it is a good book, showing survival nature at its worst (and best).

[Kulapavana 0]

yep, thats the one... thanks Mahak Prabhu! /images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

I hope the asteroid misses us because such a large chunk of rock would do a truly apocalyptic damage to Earth.

[Kulapavana 0]

Asteroid Won't Hit Earth in 2029, Scientists Now Say

By Robert Roy Britt

Senior Science Writer

posted: 27 December 2004

08:15 pm ET

 

 

The world can exhale a collective sigh of relief. A newfound asteroid tagged with the highest warning level ever issued will not strike Earth, scientists said Monday.

 

The giant space rock, named 2004 MN4, was said on Dec. 23 to have an outside shot at hitting the planet on April 13, 2029. The odds climbed as high as 1-in-37, or 2.7 percent, on Monday, Dec. 27.

 

Researchers had flagged the object as one to monitor very carefully. It was the first asteroid to be ranked 4 on the Torino Scale, a Richter-like measure for potentially threatening space rocks. The asteroid is about a quarter mile (400 meters) wide, large enough to cause considerable local or regional damage were it to hit the planet.

 

All along, scientists said additional observations would likely reduce the chance of impact to zero for the April 13 scenario, but they did not expect any significant new data to allow such a downgrading for days or weeks.

 

Instead, old observations provided the data necessary to rule out an impact.

 

Several groups were looking for the asteroid in past observations. Jeff Larsen and Anne Descour of the Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, found very faint images of asteroid 2004 MN4 on archival images dating to March 15 this year. Astronomers already had observations in June and from this month.

 

"An Earth impact on April 13, 2029 can now be ruled out," read a statement issued Monday evening by asteroid experts Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

It is not the first time a potentially threatening asteroid has been theoretically defused by looking into the past, pointed out Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute. Most famously, a space rock catalogued as 1997 XF11 was said, in 1998, to be on a collision course before archived data showed it would pass harmlessly.

 

"Past observations can greatly extend the time baseline and strongly influence knowledge of the orbit," Chapman told SPACE.com. "At some level, we are 'lucky' that these earlier sightings were made since 2004 MN4 is usually too faint to be detected by near-Earth-object search telescopes."

 

The difficulty in predicting a precise path earlier in the game owes to knowing only a small section of an asteroid's orbit around the Sun. New observations -- or old ones -- make the known path longer and allow a better prediction of the full path, as well as where an asteroid will be years from now.

 

Orbits change slightly with time because of gravitational tugs by the Sun and planets, among other factors.

 

2004 MN4 circles the Sun, but unlike most asteroids that reside in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, the 323-day orbit of 2004 MN4 lies mostly within the orbit of Earth.

 

Scientists cannot say that the asteroid will never hit Earth, but there are no serious threats in the foreseeable future. "No subsequent Earth encounters in the 21st century are of any concern," the NASA statement read.

 

 

[theist 1]

...that was close. But I still got that feeling that someone is taking aim at us with a slingshot