Meteor May 23/06

NES_fanatic · Post by **NES_fanatic** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 8:05 pm

I saw a four-hourer on the National Geographic channel about a Meteor smashing Earth. Now the main idea of blowing it up won't work. One of two things will happen:
1: The collective gravitational forces of the fractured Meteor regroup and it's as if nothing happened.
2: The meteor is smashed to pieces and we now have the astronomical equivalent of a shotgun blast headed towards us.

The only thing we could do is push it away somehow, but we don't have anything that could ever do that yet, and especially not in time for May.

Didn't the Aztecs predict the Earth to kick the bucket come December 2012? What makes this mare than just another doomsday prediction is that they had the most accurate calaendar know to man and have a perfect track record of predicting things, hundreds of years before it even happened.

wallydawg · Post by **wallydawg** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 9:59 pm

The world will end on 06/06/06, at least according to The Bronx.

edit: haha look what I just found after reading this topic:

http://omgameteor.ytmnd.com/

SavageLych · Post by **SavageLych** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 4:33 am

@ harsh boy: they figured out that they miss translated the 666 thing... its actually 616. there was a piece of papaer missing from that 1 spot, and it looked like a six, but after studding it more its actually a 1... or so the Descovery channle says...

About the meteor, its on my birthday if it hits lol, but i'm pretty sure it would be on the news if it was going to hit us...

gamemasterAS · Post by **gamemasterAS** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 5:05 am

24 days

Post by **SpongeBuell** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 7:29 am

not to make this thread go too far off, but I have today, Monday, and Tuesday left. After that, I have to take a 5 minute oral test for spanish on Thursday, and a math test on May 10th. Ha!

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 8:27 am

i only have 8 school days left *puches air*

cept i have a french oral exam on my birthday of all days

my last exam is on.. *checks timetable* 16th of june

and then im free of compulsory education!

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:20 am

Yeah, a known asteroid impact in a number of weeks or months would be on the news, unless government agencies decided giving away that information would cause undue panic.

I don't know about later this year, but the asteroid Apophis is scheduled for a rediculously close flyby on 2029 and then again on 2036. At one point astronomers had computed a 1 in 37 chance of it hitting, too, though now the number is more like 1 in 10000. If Apophis were to hit, the blast would be equivalent to ~830 megatons of TNT, or fifteen times the strength of the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated. A 2036 impact would probably hit somewhere near Mexico. I don't consider it all that dangerous, really.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:23 am

i got offf school on the 25th! ahahaha!

sam fisher · Post by **sam fisher** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:03 pm

Sparkfist wrote:Ok first, sorry but I have to answer your questions with a question. Where did you hear about this meteor?

The chances of know where a meteor is going to his is about as predictible as as lightning is.

It's been talked about for decades about how you can move something like a 6 mile wide asteroid out of the way so it wont hit Earth. Lasers will likely not work as the best a laser will do is cut or maybe melt the rock were they hit. And a nuclear explosion could, but then you have to tell NATO and the U.N. that your going to do that, we still have no nuclear weapons in space treaty.

The size of the impact depends on the size of the body, the material it's made of, how fast is it when it hits and at what angel was the strike. A lot of veribles to take into consideration.

Ummmmmmmmm...yes htey can predict very accurately where they will land. And if it were to hit earth it would be a meteorite not a meteor

Also using measurements of electro magnetic fields we could actually tell where lightning will strike

NES_fanatic wrote:I saw a four-hourer on the National Geographic channel about a Meteor smashing Earth. Now the main idea of blowing it up won't work. One of two things will happen:
1: The collective gravitational forces of the fractured Meteor regroup and it's as if nothing happened.
2: The meteor is smashed to pieces and we now have the astronomical equivalent of a shotgun blast headed towards us.

The only thing we could do is push it away somehow, but we don't have anything that could ever do that yet, and especially not in time for May.

Didn't the Aztecs predict the Earth to kick the bucket come December 2012? What makes this mare than just another doomsday prediction is that they had the most accurate calaendar know to man and have a perfect track record of predicting things, hundreds of years before it even happened.

1. They would seriously pack a lot of Nukes. Also we have pretty big ones now. Just not detonated as we dotn want to blow up the earth. At least a 1 gigaton charge would be placed in a geometrically correct position in the asteroid. it would be akin to putting a bomb in a caravan. The object would be ripped a apart and scattered far and wide. It would be scattered so far the the gravity caused by the asteroids mass, 10miles isnt much compared to the earths size

, would not be enough to cause a reintegration of the intial body or to any dangerous size.

2. Earth has an atmosphere. As an object approches at high speed it collides with the particles in the atmosphere, friction, cause the object to heat up and burn out. The shot gun chunks would likely burn up aswell.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:12 pm

not if each "shot gun chunk" was the size of a house. its all relative.

and i dont think they can predict very accurately where a meteor would strike 1000 years from now. the problem is that they would have to account for the gravity of every other body in the solar system, which isnt that simple. one very small change in velocity 100 years beforehand can be the difference between a direct hit and an obvious miss.

sam fisher · Post by **sam fisher** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:15 pm

Not to mention the influence of the gravitational pull of dark matter!

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 8:50 pm

If an asteroid were to be on an impact course 1000 years from now, it wouldn't be a threat at all. Our level of technology would be quite sufficient.

Pushing an asteroid off course would be much easier and cleaner than blowing it up. You would still use nukes, and even a miniscule change in direction would add up over the distances involved to a substantial gap. It could end up missing us by millions of miles.

Post by **bicostp** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:21 pm

... but at that point we'd all be long since 6 feet under anyways, so why do I care?

Unless we all become heads in jars, and we'd all hang out on a shelf somewhere reminicing about the SNES, SUVs, rain forests, and gasoline...

Seriously, I think, even with our current technology, we're able to detect potentially hazardous asteroids and figure out their trajectories. Then we'd have however many years to develop the technologies needed to save the planet.

Failing at that, we can always send out Harrison Ford and Aerosmith...lol robot chicken

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 3:51 am

hmm aerosmith.....how about....

Megadeth!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xWZT7MjXX88&search=Megadeth

If it worked for martians it'll work for an astreriod

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 2:24 pm

just thought i'd throw this in here, "Comet fragments in close encounter with Earth" will miss. maybe that's the "meteor" people said was gonna hit earth on the 26th. must have been blown up by megadeth