Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Express reports that a colossal one mile wide asteroid will brush past the Earth this Thursday, with a closest approach of 3 million kilometres – far too close for comfort, with a rock that big.
According to The Express;
The gigantic missile thought to measure almost a mile across will brush closer than previous monsters which have sparked a global panic.
Worried astronomers warned 1999 FN53, which is an eighth of the size of Mount Everest, will skim the Earth in THREE DAYS.
A collision would be nothing short of catastrophic triggering mass destruction, earthquakes and global extinction.
The monster is more than TEN TIMES bigger than other meteorites currently visible on NASA’s Near Earth Object radar.
It is also double the size of the gargantuan 2014-YB35 which had astronomers around the world watching the skies in March.
Experts warn a collision would trigger an explosion similar to millions of megatons of TNT and would be capable of killing 1.5 billion people.
On this occasion a collision seems unlikely – but it doesn’t take much of an orbital perturbation to put an Earth grazer onto a collision course.
A collision of 1999 FN53 with Earth, especially an ocean strike, would be nothing short of catastrophic. The fire and blast alone would likely kill millions. It would cause massive earthquakes across the world. An ocean strike would raise mountain size tsunamis which would smash coastal cities thousands of miles from the strike. The climate impact would also be significant – the Younger Dryas, a brutal collapse in global temperatures which lasted 1200 years, may have been caused by an asteroid impact.
What could we do if a large Asteroid on a collision course was detected? The answer is quite a lot, given a few years warning. The Manhattan Project scientists, in the 1950s, developed a simple design for a space drive whose capabilities were straight out of science fiction – capable of lifting gigantic payloads in a single stage to orbit. The most powerful designs could have powered starships – up to around 10% of the speed of light. Such a ship could be built in a year or two, if it was a priority, and would be more than capable of pushing a dangerous asteroid into a different orbit.
“given a few years warning” — there’s the rub. When was it noticed that 1999 FN53 is going to come so close?
The beginning of the designator is the year of discovery; so, it was discovered in 1999. It’s possible that we didn’t know enough about its orbit to predict its next approach, but that seems unlikely.
The way I figure it, that “monster” will pass through an area 55,507 times the area of the earth.
So I guess that means about one chance in 55,500 that it will hit us.
If I’m not mistaken, we already have a monster asteroid millions of times bigger than this one, and it is just sitting there much closer than this thing is going to come; maybe it s8 times closer.
This sounds like a “send more grant money” advertisement to me.
It will go through the edge of that area. It will go through a point on that edge. The risk is not this time, but next time it’s near. While its future path will be a bit uncertain, it will go though about the same point on Earth’s orbit on each trip around the Sun. Exactly how long it will be before it and the Earth link up again is uncertain. Wait until we have a better handle on the orbital perturbation.
My understanding is that the closer the body’s path is to linear, the harder it is to calculate its path accurately. If it’s headed straight for us, we’ll have little warning.
It’s close enough to the earth that the earth’s orbit will significantly perturb it’s orbit. Knowing the exact distance from the earth on this pass will help us to calculate where it will be over the next few years.
Look up : http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi then search for ( 1999 FN53 ) then click on (close approach data). Au is the distance between earth and sun which is 149 597 871 kilometres. You can do the maths. You will see it passed closer in 1999.
“””””…..
jorgekafkazar
May 11, 2015 at 10:20 pm
My understanding is that the closer the body’s path is to linear, the harder it is to calculate its path accurately. …..”””””
What was the last celestial body that was found to be following a linear trajectory ??
George E. Smith, You probably should chop a zero or two off your target since gravity makes it different than a dart board, and of course, hitting the moon should also be factored in- it could still do us harm.
Ok, I confess – I don’t understand why this seems to be such a huge concern, so is it primarily just media sensationalism? I mean, isn’t it on a trajectory that has it passing something like 26 times the distance of the Earth to the moon? Am I missing something? I mean, I get that it’s huge and would cause horrible damage – but it sure sounds like the chances of it coming anywhere near us is virtually nil??
Rational Db8
This press release guarantees them the exposure they need for next few budgets the next few fiscal years.
@RACookPE1978
Thanks for the reply and confirmation. I was afraid I might have been missing something, but was sure suspecting it was sensationalism. Appreciate the confirmation. Gawd I hate it when papers do this sort of thing – they stretch and exaggerate beyond all recognition, and it’s disgusting.
“””””…..
Gary Pearse
May 12, 2015 at 5:36 pm
George E. Smith, You probably should chop a zero or two off your target since gravity makes it different than a dart board, and of course, hitting the moon should also be factored in- it could still do us harm……”””””
Well I didn’t define the target; the article did. Now I might have inadvertently left one of the PIs in there, so it might be only one in 18,000 spots in the target are.
The article gave no direction in space as seen from earth, for the track of the space ship, so it the earth could be anywhere in that circle.
Well did we get nearly missed yet ? Izzit ok to climb out from under the desk ?
Everybody around me (coffee shop) is hollerin’ at each other so evidently they aren’t aware of just what isn’t about to happen.
G
This is even scarier than a 1 degrees rise in temperatures.
not even close. 1 degree rise in temp can wreck a perfect filet mignon
So party is Wednesday night, and steak comes off a bit early… Red wine so as not to add to warming with a fridge…. Got it!
🙂
Somebody a hell of a lot smarter than me (Canadian Nobel Physics Prize winner), told me: The smallest portion of any sphere still has exactly the same curvature as the whole !!
Is this asteroid responsible for the recently declared El Niño event we expect to experience over the next 12 months?
That could leave one hell of a wake!
It sure would give a whole new meaning to the phrase “Surf’s up!”
Whaaa???!!!
They got it bass ackward… CO2 emissions have been what caused this body to soon pass within 3 million miles of Earth. Everybody knows that, The science is settled.
It’s not. According to NASA the closest approach will be about 26.5 Lunar Distances, more than 6 million miles.
This is a non-event.
http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/1999FN53/1999FN53_planning.html
They have been kinda quiet about this one. I wonder why?
3 million or 5 million miles is not especially “close”, and I agree with others that this report must have been a “slow news day” or designed to distract from something else. If so, it appears to have worked.
missile: an object that is forcibly propelled at a target, either by hand or from a mechanical weapon.
The breathless hyperbole of the Express notwithstanding, extra-terrestrial bodies crossing Earth orbit are a real danger of an entirely different sort than errant word usage.
This is the ‘newspaper’ that every few weeks runs a ‘terrible weather storm’ report! Pathetic rag.
How big are the error bars on that 3-million-kilometer estimate?
Very small. On the order of a few thousand kilometers.
I respectfully disagree. Since the actual distance is 6 million miles, the 3 million km estimate is off by about by about 4.8 million km, in the direction of safety.
I don’t have a feel for the scale, but could something that big zooming close by Earth cause any measurable change in our gravity?
Not in the slightest. Our most sensitive instruments would never be able to detect the gravity from a 1-mile-wide asteroid 1.6 million miles away.
BTW: a curious mix of measurements in the announcement; either English or metric, but please be consistent!
While on Earth, i believe it could be measured away from the Earth/Moon’s influence. It will have no measurable influence on our system.
Would there be any ‘bow-wave’ effects? Perhaps disturbance of the e-m field?
No
In order for the asteroid to have bow-wave effects, it would need to be traveling through some medium, but space is a pretty hard vacuum. The Earth does have a pretty strong magnetic field, but the inverse-square law for distance means that at 1.6 million miles (3 million km) the effect would be vanishingly small. Unless the asteroid itself had an incredibly strong magnetic field, which would be unlikely in the extreme.
At this distance, the only effect that humans will feel from the asteroid’s passage is an increased risk of strokes, due to people’s blood pressure spiking in anger over such ridiculous news coverage.
It may muss your hair a tad. Extra hair gel and you will be fine!
Not in the slightest.
The gravitational force (gravity) will still be GM1M2/R^2.
So not to worry.
I have the same question as Mr. Burton…just how long has this approach been known? I may have missed it but I don’t recall seeing any discussion of it online or on any TV network. One would think this might have been newsworthy.
3 million kilometers is a pretty good berth. 8 or 9 times the distance to the moon.
On the other hand, a 1 kilometer asteroid hit is a very bad day.
I don’t know where the 3 million km came from. The distance will be more than 6 million miles, roughly 6% of the distance to the sun, about 32 light seconds away.
Is it large enough to have tidal effects at that range?
If not I am perfectly comfortable with that distance.
I rather doubt it is large enough to cause problems at that distance considering it will be an order of magnitude farther away than the Moon. I’ll worry when they predict a rock big enough for the impact to cause global problems passing inside the Moon’s orbit.
Not in the slightest. The Moon is one-eighth the distance, and enormously more massive.
Hey, what if one of these hit the Moon? Could it shatter it? I suppose even the moon (1/6 mass of Earth) is too large, but how large are the largest asteroids we could encounter?
There is no chance at all that a so-far-unseen asteroid could collide with the Moon with enough force to smash it. Our telescopes are already able to see virtually every dinosaur-killer class rock out there; that’s why they’re looking. Relatively small rocks like this one might cause continent-wide damage, but within 10 years or so, there won’t be any more big rocks that we won’t know about.
The worry will then become, are there any massive bodies in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud that are periodically perturbing some rocks into the inner solar system; the “Nemesis” hypothesis? So far we’ve not seen any evidence of this, but the Webb space telescope will probably give us better answers.
No, it could not shatter the moon, even though the moon is only 0.0123 the mass of earth, not 0.1667 times.
MattS, would you be more comfortable with this:
“The future for Apophis on Friday, April 13 of 2029 includes an approach to Earth no closer than 29,470 km (18,300 miles, or 5.6 Earth radii from the center, or 4.6 Earth-radii from the surface) over the mid-Atlantic, appearing to the naked eye as a moderately bright point of light moving rapidly across the sky. Depending on its mechanical nature, it could experience shape or spin-state alteration due to tidal forces caused by Earth’s gravity field. ”
.
I thought SG-1 had dealt with thim.
But then, these bad guys have a nasty habit of coming back.
It’s not going to bother me. Apophis isn’t that big. Even at that range, it wouldn’t have any tidal effects on the earth, and an impact while devastating to the area hit, would not be a global catastrophe.
I believe it last passed us on 1999-May-12 00:38. Not that I noticed.
What day in May of 1999?, May 1? or the end of April?. Can you be more specific please?. Thanks B.J. Can you also specify what part of the world it might have been observed? I am really interested in this because of a visual observation we had during that time period. ( If you need to you can ask WUWT for my e-mail)
Asybot:
@ur momisugly 00:38 on the 12th may 1999. This link will give more imfo, http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi you need to search (1999 FN53). Hope this helps.
Thanks, it will and what we saw was april 30th 1999 must have been a large fireball awestruck!
Thanks, we use the site but could not find anything on that date all these years ago, what we saw was on April 30th 1999 must have been a large fireball, we were awestruck! Living In Canada (around 50N/ 120L) I think maybe there was no radar coverage the direction it came from was unusual as well WNW to SE very low to the northern horizon (against “the flow”) nothing about sats etc, but thanks for the reply, cheers.
I think it is certain that long before the next big asteroid hits, the human race will have gone extinct (our species is only a few hundred thousands years old, if that) or gone to the stars. I’ll be dead then, for sure.
Relax. I am more worried about the stock market crashing.
But then there is Apophis.
Better send in Jack O’Neill.
Two Ls.
Stop it. Apophis is not an Earth killer. Impact energy: 1.2e+03 MT, or 1.2GT, or roughly 12 times the yield of the largest fusion weapon. 1950 DA is much more destructive.
Tsk Tsk:
Perhaps not an Earth killer but certainly a very destructive object, especially if it hits in your area.
@Tsk Tsk
OK, not an earth-killer or ELE, but I think it’s safe to say that even if it doesn’t ruin your day directly, the next couple or three generations of humans will have a rough go of it from the combined economic and environmental effects.
I’m in cash, waiting for the crash.
Big objects at high speed hit the earth occasionally. Few, if any, people have been hurt in a hundred years. I see no reason to fear an asteroid . . . unless it has a gun. [TCC – 1999]
If the Tunguska strike had happened over a populated area, 100’s of thousands could have been killed.
The Russian meteor from last year hurt hundreds.
All injuries were indirect. Broken glass, etc.
“If the Tunguska strike had happened over a populated area”
It hasn’t happened in 5,000 years of human history. The rate of accretion has dropped precipitously in 4,500,000,000 years. Big earth, few strikes. Nothing to fear here. You are far more likely to die from a bee sting.
Gamecock
Well, as I nearly did die after a series of wasp stings (18-24) when a big nest was disturbed, I will take your comparison with a different lesson. 8<)
More to the point, since the string of earth-sized impacts on Jupiter in the 1990's, there have been 4-5 additional huge cloud impacts observed. Collisions are not rare.
Gamecock, unless the meteor lands on top of you, all the affects are indirect. Broken glass et. al. were the result of the meteor’s shock wave. No meteor, no broken glass. Bigger meteor or over a more populated area, and more people hurt.
Do you think there is some kind of cosmic law that all future meteor’s are going to land in Kunguska? Had the meteor landed an hour later, it would have hit St. Petersburg. 2 hours later and it would have hit somewhere in Europe.
Just because we have been lucky in the past is not evidence that we will always be lucky.
In the last couple hundred years, there have been two observed impacts on the moon. Both would have been large enough to get through the earth’s atmosphere.
The chances of being killed by a meteor are remote. This “event” changes nothing.
“3 million kilometre” NEAR MISS is theater.
Name me somebody who was killed by a meteor.
Gamecock writes: “Name me somebody who was killed by a meteor.”
We’ve been lucky so far, and our records aren’t good enough to know who in the Siberian wilderness might have been living near Tunguska in 1908. Before that, there were no historical records of impact events; Thomas Jefferson even wrote that he would rather believe that Yankee scientists would lie, than that rocks could fall from the sky. Of course, we’re unable to list by name the victims of Pompeii or Tambora; big explosions don’t leave many bodies.
But it HAS happened. About 15 years ago, a woman was injured when a smallish rock crashed through the roof of a New Jersey doctor’s office. And a boy in Germany was slightly injured when a pea-sized pebble hit his hand on his way to school. And a rock that smashed a car in somebody’s driveway – fortunately, there was nobody in the car at the time.
The Chelyabinsk meteor explosion caused mostly injuries from flying glass, as people rushed to the windows to see what the bright flash had been; all except for one classroom where the teacher remembered her “duck and cover” drills. Nobody hurt there.
About 25 years ago, there was an explosion very high in the sky over Indonesia, and there was a film of an “Earth-grazing” object that passed over Montana; I think that was back in the ’80’s. And there was an intriguing speculation from an MIT Press article about a possible near miss of a splintered comet which MIGHT have passed within a few thousand miles of Earth back in the 1880s….
But we HAVE been lucky. With more and more people, we WILL be hit again. Fire up Google Earth, and look for circular features that aren’t volcanoes. Impact craters. The Earth is 3/4 water; there’s a lot of ocean that won’t show much if something hits. But google “Burckle Formation”, and consider that the Noah stories and the Gilgamesh stories both tell of enormous floods – at about the same time.
There was a woman in Alabama who was hit in the hip when a rock came through her roof. Might have been in the 60’s.
Scientists are leaning towards the flooding of the Black Sea basin as the sea levels rose around 5000 years ago as the source of the Noah and Gilgamesh legends.
No idea how accurate or complete this list is, but since you asked for a list of people injured or killed by a meteor, here it is for whatever it’s worth. Of course, the 1,000+ injured in Russia recently ought to be added:
1420 BC Israel – Fatal meteorite impact.
588 AD China – 10 deaths; siege towers destroyed.
1321-68 China – People & animals killed; homes ruined.
1369 Ho-t’ao China – Soldier injured; fire.
02/03/1490 Shansi, China – 10,000 deaths.
09/14/1511 Cremona, Italy – Monk, birds, & sheep killed.
1633-64 Milono, Italy – Monk killed.
1639 China – Tens of deaths; 10 homes destroyed.
1647-54 Indian Ocean – 2 sailors killed aboard a ship.
07/24/1790 France – Farmer killed; home destroyed; cattle killed.
01/16/1825 Oriang, India – Man killed; woman injured.
02/27/1827 Mhow, India – Man injured.
12/11/1836 Macao, Brazil – Oxen killed; homes damaged.
07/14/1847 Braunau, Bohemia – Home struck by 371 lb meteorite.
01/23/1870 Nedagolla, India – Man stunned by meteorite.
06/30/1874 Ming Tung li, China – Cottage crushed, child killed.
01/14/1879 Newtown, Indiana, USA – Man killed in bed.
01/31/1879 Dun-Lepoelier, France – Farmer killed by meteorite.
11/19/1881 Grossliebenthal, Russia – Man injured.
03/11/1897 West Virginia, USA – Walls pierced, horse killed, man injured.
09/05/1907 Weng-li, China – Whole family crushed to death.
06/30/1908 Tunguska, Siberia – Fire, 2 people killed. (referenced throughout paper)
04/28/1927 Aba, Japan – Girl injured by meteorite.
12/08/1929 Zvezvan, Yugoslavia – Meteorite hit bridal party, 1 killed.
05/16/1946 Santa Ana, Mexico – Houses destroyed, 28 injured.
11/30/1946 Colford, UK – Telephones knocked out, boy injured.
11/28/1954 Sylacauga, Alabama, USA – 4 kg meteorite struck home, lady injured.
08/14/1992 Mbole, Uganda – 48 stones fell, roofs damaged, boy injured.
Also, fyi for anyone interested – and I think this is really fascinating myself, considering they’re using detectors for the Nuclear Test Ban treaty to pick up and record thermonuclear sized blasts from incoming meteors:
Asteroid Impact More Common Than Most Think, But Is Anyone Doing Anything About It? [VIDEO]
The stars are an unlikely destination.
Gully Foyle is my name
Terra is my nation
Deep space my dwelling place
The stars my destination.
Alas, I believe Gully never made it to the stars, iirc.
“””””…..Just because we have been lucky in the past is not evidence that we will always be lucky……”””””
So what is your evidence that “we have been lucky in the past.”
We will get hit or not, whenever the laws of physics say we will get hit or not, and not until they do or not.
And luck has nothing to do with it.
The evidence? the number of comets and asteroids out there compared to the number that have actually hit us recently. What you claim would be true only if the orbits of these objects were known. They’re definitely not.
Stock market crashing again almost certainly the most likely. Also nasty, however, would be a Carrington type EMP from the sun, or someone deciding to pop off a high altitude burst above the nation to hit us (or the UK) with a devastating EMP, or perhaps even less likely, Yellowstone caldera popping off. THAT would be very very nasty, as would any major EMP regardless of source.
Not, it’s not safe to say that. The resulting impact leaves a ~6km diameter crater assuming landfall. At a distance of 50km the worst effect is probably the ejecta and overpressure wave of ~9″ and 5psi, respectively. Beyond 100km you’re looking at predominantly just a seismic event of 6.7. If that impact were to hit in a remote area like siberia, it would be a bad day for those close to it and aside from the news cycle the rest of the planet would be worried about the latest celebrity wardrobe malfunction within a couple of months at most.
BTW, this impact calculator is very cool.
link says 6 million miles (not 3 million kilometers). That is about 24 times the earth-moon distance…yawn
I don’t even see it mentioned on spaceweather.com’s PHA chart.
I was going to comment the same thing. Maybe spaceweather does not consider it a “close” object.
The Younger Dryas cosmic impact hypothesis has been thoroughly discredited, several times. Please stop.
YD was almost certainly caused by Laurentide meltwater Lake Agassiz bursting through glacial ice dams along what is now the St. Laurence seaway, causing a millennial melt water pulse into the North Atlantic, interrupting its thermohaline circulation. I researched this extensively for months before deciding the geological evidence was too convincing to merit a questioning essay in ebook Blowing Smoke.
An issue all skeptics should contemplate is how skeptical to become. In the extreme, do not become legitimately criticized mere silly total deniers. See my just past guest essay here for examples.
Win climate wars, not climate skirmishes. Fight the climate consensus smartly. Please.
Unfortunately the Lake Agassiz theory has been as thoroughly discredited as the impact theory. There never was any “bursting through glacial dams” and at the time of the Younger Dryas Lake Agassiz drained southwards to the Gulf of Mexico. It did drain briefly to the St Lawrence c. 4000 years later which may have caused the “8.2 KA Event” in the North Atlantic.
It is weird how many of these erroneous and seemingly ineradicable factoids there are in ‘climate science’
tty –
For once I agree with you. Even Wally Broecker, father of the oceanic conveyor belt has admitted that the Lake Agassiz ice dam outburst could not have caused the Younger Dryas stadial (ice period).
Oh, the global warmists loved that ice dam idea, because it allowed them to think that the same sort of oceanic conveyor shutdown could do it again.
You are a few years out of date, aren’t you? You getting your information from 2009-2010?
Bingo.
There is no evidence for a comet strike at the Younger Dryas.
Or asteroid.
So the YDB black layer, which covered FOUR continents and the 50 million sq kms with carbon nanodiamonds, does not exist?
You know, the key piece of evidence for the YDB impact hypothosis?
Claiming there is “no evidence” of the YDB impact hypothosis amounts to fabulism.
Hell, you YDB impact theory so-called ‘Sckeptics’ have repeatedly and publically claimed multiple impact fireballs were impossible on Earth — The SL-9 multi-impact event at Jupiter is explained as “unique” — until September of 2014, when this thing called “reality” rain on your parade.
In this case quite literally —
===========
Four Large Fireball Events over USA
September 24th, 2014
http://www.amsmeteors.org/2014/09/four-large-fireball-events-over-usa/
Four large unique fireball events were reported to the AMS last night.
•Event #2305-2014 was seen at approximately 1:11 local time (EDT) in FL and GA.
•Event #2306-2014 – Over 420 witnesses from IL, IN, MI, OH and WI reported a bright fireball over Michigan around 21:55 local time.
•Event #2307-2014 – 30 witnesses from TN, AR, AL, IL, MS, MO and KY reported seeing a fireball over Tennessee at approximately 20:30 local time
•Event #2308-2014 – 42 witnesses in CT, PA, NY, NJ, MA and MD reported seeing a bright fireball in North Easter Pennsylvania near 20:47 local time.
=========
Proof positive of closely spaced multiple impacts on North America can happen at any time is empirically provided.
The only questions left at hand are how often and how large, not whether or not multiple asteroid impacts can happen.
“””””…..The SL-9 multi-impact event at Jupiter is explained as “unique” …..”””””
@Trent Telenko.
ALL events are unique.
There simply is no evidence that ANY event ever happened twice. The concept is absurd.
Each event typically happens at a specific location at a specific time.
For an event to happen twice, it would have to happen twice at the same location and at the same time, or it would not be the same event, and there would be no way to tell if it was a single event, or two simultaneous co-located events, or a hundred of them happening together.
Like I said; the concept is absurd.
Rristvan, The Younger Dryas event is one of those things that has become contentious. Therefore studies may not be very independent and the authors may be trying to prove their point rather than to determine the truth. Which studies are those that the authors are trying to prove their point and how can someone determine this? The only answer is to read multiple studies and try to determine who was more thorough, who provides their data.
You chose to believe the hypothesis that the Younger Dryas was almost certainly caused by Lake Agassiz bursting through glacial ice dams into the North Atlantic. This hypothesis however, is one that based on the evidence has been shown to be impossible. As someone else already pointed out, “There never was any “bursting through glacial dams” and at the time of the Younger Dryas Lake Agassiz drained southwards to the Gulf of Mexico. It did drain briefly to the St Lawrence c. 4000 years later which may have caused the “8.2 KA Event” in the North Atlantic.”
The issue with asteroids is that there are many types of asteroids with various potential compositions. Depending on the composition of the asteroid, they may break apart quickly as they enter the earth’s atmosphere fragmenting such that a fairly large asteroid such as one that might have caused the Younger Dryas event could when the earth is glaciated, mainly impacted into miles thick glacier before striking the underlying earth. Thus, there are many theories of what kind of debris field there would be, where the debris would be and etc. Given these facts, it is very difficult to disprove the asteroid impact theory.
Then there are studies such as this one: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677046 contain quite a bit of evidence in support of the asteroid theory.
The Carolina Bays…….http://www.georgehoward.net/cbays.htm
@BobG –
Hahaha – That 2012 paper is exactly the kind of papers that “doesn’t exist” according to the YDB impact skeptics. THAT is how they can run around denying the hypothesis – by pretending that the evidence was never found, never lab tested, never properly dated, never submitted to any journals, and never accepted and published in journals.
IOW, they believe everything the kibitzing skeptics say and nothing of what the original scientists say who actually did the research.
BobG : “Rristvan, The Younger Dryas event is one of those things that has become contentious. Therefore studies may not be very independent and the authors may be trying to prove their point rather than to determine the truth. Which studies are those that the authors are trying to prove their point and how can someone determine this? The only answer is to read multiple studies and try to determine who was more thorough, who provides their data.”
Exactly. It is contentious. Mostly, IMHO, because a small group of anti-catastrophe scientists take the stand that the original researchers were non-professional scientists who did inadequate research – even though every paper has had tons of lab results included and showed all their work. At VERY few times have the skeptics actually tried to refute the lab results or impute that the lab work was done wrong, other than to say something was “misinterpreted”. The skeptic papers show that the real issue is that they interpret those lab results differently – and usually without even doing their own lab work or field work. There seems to be no doubt that their are markers for impacts – markers that in all previous finds were readily accepted as pointing at a likely impact.
Had these markers – impactites – been accepted as straightforwardly as other instances, the YD researchers would long ago have been able to move on and LOOK for an impact site and LOOK for what might have been MORE locations with such evidence. Instead, the YD researchers feel the need to answer the sniping, kibitzing, arm-chair-science papers of their skeptics. And the YD researchers go round and round in this seemingly interminable dance.
There is no difficulty for geologists and astronomers, etc., to simply tentatively accept that certain impact markers might point to such an impact at that time, and then to simply help find such an impact site or to get out of the way and let the evidence be found. Like the Lake Agassiz “affair”, as the evidence accumulated, there would have either been a preponderance of supporting evidence or the opposite. The scientists by accepting that it MIGHT be true, research could go forward.
Your comment shows a very calm, reasoned, objective approach which would be a sound beginning for any inquiry into any possible past naturally occurring event or process.
As to whose studies are “more thorough” and “who provides their data”, I DO invite you to go read the various papers. And unlike sturgishooper, you seem like the type who will actually look at the original researchers’ rebuttals to the skeptics’ assertions of inadequate, which I think fully address the skeptics’ claims.
I would point you to at a lesser study, http://webcentral.uc.edu/eProf/media/attachment/eprofmediafile_1769.pdf – “Species Response to the Theorized Clovis Comet Impact at Sheriden Cave, Ohio” Tankersley
This puts the “assemblage” in the study at exactly the time of the YDB, RCYBP. The paper, in 2009, used IntCal09; the current IntCal13 would show the dates 100 years younger – at 12,900-12,800. van Hoesel in 2013 made a huge deal out of a 100-year variance, which disappeared when the newer C14 calibration curves came out, and which she misinterpreted.
Lonsdaelite, in particular, is ALWAYS seen as 100% evidence of an impact. Except in this case. The energies needed to make hexagonal nano-diamonds is just too high for any terrestrial process to create it. Yet the skeptics continually deny (literally) the presence lonsdaelite evidence. And basically without anything but their interpretations versus the YD researcher’s lab results.
Which is more sound? We will know someday.
Actually, there’s enough evidence (in the form of tektites and shocked quartz deposits) to speculate, but not enough to be certain.
No, there isn’t any evidence. There are no tektites or shocked quartz deposits. It’s a fantasy, completely devoid of physical evidence and with all the evidence in the world against it. The YD was no different from the other rapid cooling events which preceded and followed it, not from similar events during prior glacial-interglacial transitions.
From 2015, but comparable studies are available for the whole lifetime of this science fiction “hypothesis”:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.12435/abstract
Abstract
The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis suggests that multiple airbursts or extraterrestrial impacts occurring at the end of the Allerød interstadial resulted in the Younger Dryas cold period. So far, no reproducible, diagnostic evidence has, however, been reported. Quartz grains containing planar deformation features (known as shocked quartz grains), are considered a reliable indicator for the occurrence of an extraterrestrial impact when found in a geological setting. Although alleged shocked quartz grains have been reported at a possible Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary layer in Venezuela, the identification of shocked quartz in this layer is ambiguous. To test whether shocked quartz is indeed present in the proposed impact layer, we investigated the quartz fraction of multiple Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary layers from Europe and North America, where proposed impact markers have been reported. Grains were analyzed using a combination of light and electron microscopy techniques. All samples contained a variable amount of quartz grains with (sub)planar microstructures, often tectonic deformation lamellae. A total of one quartz grain containing planar deformation features was found in our samples. This shocked quartz grain comes from the Usselo palaeosol at Geldrop Aalsterhut, the Netherlands. Scanning electron microscopy cathodoluminescence imaging and transmission electron microscopy imaging, however, show that the planar deformation features in this grain are healed and thus likely to be older than the Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary. We suggest that this grain was possibly eroded from an older crater or distal ejecta layer and later redeposited in the European sandbelt. The single shocked quartz grain at this moment thus cannot be used to support the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.
sturgishooper –
Tektites? Shocked quartz?
What a JOKE. NO ONE on the pro-YDB side of this has ever asserted taht tektites are found. And as to shocked quartz…
I just did a fairly extensive perusal of one claim of the recent van Hoesel et al 2015 paper that you linked to.
Do you really and truly actually listen to these YDB skeptic and not laugh?
Or do you have no filter? Anything a YDB skeptic says you BELIEVE?
Van Hoesel claimed that at a site named Geldrop-Aalsterhut in the Netherlands the YDB team claimed to have found “shocked quartz”.
That is ONE WEIRD assertion on her part. The claim happens to be completely untrue.
Only ONE pro-YDB paper even investigated Geldrop-Aalsterhut, so it made it kind of easy to crap all over her assertion (lie). That paper is here: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Charles_Kinzie/publication/268390328_Nanodiamond-Rich_Layer_Across_Three_Continents_Consistent_with_Major_Cosmic_Impact_at_12800_Cal_BP/links/546a7aec0cf2f5eb18077cfe.pdf
Go ahead. GO to Google Scholar and search for “Geldrop-Aalsterhut Dryas”. Almost all of the HITS are van Hoesel papers or articles. Only ONE is a paper that is pro-YDIH.
And what does that pro-YDIH paper say about finding SHOCKED QUARTZ there at Geldrop-Aalsterhut?
Not one thing.
(I LOVE THIS, pointing out the lies of some scientists… I really DO.)
There are 3 mentions in the paper about ANY kind of quartz. And none of those talk about shocked quartz. One says that “quartz, rutile, and zircon” were minerals encountered. One mention said they never found any melted quartz. One said that their protocols for identifying NDs [nanodiamonds] did “not remove non-ND crystals, including quartz, rutile and zircon”. The fourth mention was in the title of a reference.
The word “shocked”? It showed up in a reference, one only having to do with limestone.
Is Annaliese van Hoesel also going to accuse the YDB team of falsely claiming to have found “shocked limestone? “Shocked rutile”? “Shocked zircon”?
Her 2015 paper is pretty much garbage.
She put up a straw man – claiming that they said something that they never said. And then wrote up a paper castigating them for their failure to find the thing that they never even discussed.
Someone needs to pull her “Sciencing” licence.
And YOU – what are you doing? Listening to such lies and drivel?
Steve,
Sorry, but I had to laugh at loud at your comment about tektites. The very comment to which you are replying and to which I replied stated this:
“kenwd0elq
May 11, 2015 at 6:46 pm
Actually, there’s enough evidence (in the form of tektites and shocked quartz deposits) to speculate, but not enough to be certain.”
Yes, I have an active filter, which is why I concluded that the YDIH is anti-scientific garbage, completely lacking in the least shred of supporting physical evidence. Only in this age of science corrupted by the baleful influence of consensus “climate science” could this unscientific conjecture, ie evidence free assertion, have gotten as much ink as it has.
Trent Telenko –
Evidently sturgishooper has been listening to those who put their fingers in their ears and mumble “Lalalalalalalala. . . ” every time they hear of lab evidence of an impact at 12,800 years ago. When someone doesn’t WANT evidence to be there, they assert that the evidence isn’t really evidence. This allows them to further assert that, “Since we haven’t heard of any evidence to that effect, the evidence doesn’t exist.”
It’s all in how good one’s ear plugs are.
And then sturgishooper reads those skeptics’ negative assertions and doesn’t bother looking into it himself. Which allows HIM to argue that such evidence doesn’t exist.
How would I know this? Because if sturgishooper actually read the YDB papers thoroughly, he would see that the evidence is quite clear. And if he also was to read the rebuttal letters and papers to the skeptics, he would know the same things. There is not ONE point that the YDB skeptics have made that has stood up against the rebuttals.
Trent,
Black mats are not extraterrestrial in origin and occur at many intervals:
http://www.livescience.com/19844-cosmic-collision-black-mats-earth.html
I’ve worked on the Atacama beds myself.
Neither are the so-called “nanodiamonds”:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140127193854.htm
http://news.agu.org/press-release/fossil-evidence-casts-doubt-on-younger-dryas-impact-theory/
“WASHINGTON—New findings challenge a theory that a meteor explosion or impact thousands of years ago caused catastrophic fires over much of North America and Europe and triggered an abrupt global cooling period, called the Younger Dryas. Whereas proponents of the theory have offered “carbonaceous spherules” and nanodiamonds—both of which they claimed were formed by intense heat—as evidence of the impact, a new study concludes that those supposed clues are nothing more than fossilized balls of fungus, charcoal, and fecal pellets. Moreover, these naturally-occurring organic materials, some of which had likely been subjected to normal cycles of wildfires, date from a period of thousands of years both before and after the time that the Younger Dryas period began—further suggesting that there was no sudden impact event.”
Joe,
Not even YDIH advocates claim the Carolina Bays as evidence anymore.
Steve,
You’ve got it backwards. Every claim of “evidence” made by advocates of the impact hypothesis has been shown false, which is why their story keeps changing. As I said, there is zero valid evidence of an impact at the YD, and all the evidence in the world against it, to include the megafaunal extinctions so absurdly attributed to the non-event.
BobG
May 12, 2015 at 11:41 am
Sorry, Bob, I overlooked your comment.
Here are just a few of the things wrong with Kinzie, et al:
https://quantpalaeo.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/yet-another-younger-dryas-impact-paper/
Here is a good summary of the total lack of evidence for the impact hypothesis from the same year in which Kinzie, et al rehashed their already thoroughly debunked fantasy:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.2724/abstract
The YD was no different from all the other sudden cooling events in the Pleistocene.
From Holliday, et al, Journal of Quaternary Science, 8 Aug 2014:
“ABSTRACT
“In this paper we review the evidence for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH), which proposes that at ∼12.9k cal a BP North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East were subjected to some sort of extraterrestrial event. This purported event is proposed as a catastrophic process responsible for: terminal Pleistocene environmental changes (onset of YD cooling, continent-scale wildfires); extinction of late Pleistocene mammals; and demise of the Clovis ‘culture’ in North America, the earliest well-documented, continent-scale settlement of the region. The basic physics in the YDIH is not in accord with the physics of impacts nor the basic laws of physics. No YD boundary (YDB) crater, craters or other direct indicators of an impact are known. Age control is weak to non-existent at 26 of the 29 localities claimed to have evidence for the YDIH. Attempts to reproduce the results of physical and geochemical analyses used to support the YDIH have failed or show that many indicators are not unique to an impact nor to ∼12.9k cal a BP. The depositional environments of purported indicators at most sites tend to concentrate particulate matter and probably created many ‘YDB zones’. Geomorphic, stratigraphic and fire records show no evidence of any sort of catastrophic changes in the environment at or immediately following the YDB. Late Pleistocene extinctions varied in time and across space. Archeological data provide no indication of population decline, demographic collapse or major adaptive shifts at or just after ∼12.9 ka. The data and the hypotheses generated by YDIH proponents are contradictory, inconsistent and incoherent.”
sturgishooper – Once again, you’ve got your signals crossed.
No one on ANY side – except you, asserting that someone ELSE said it – ever claimed at all that all black mats are ET in origin.
Almost 100% of the material in the YDB black mat sites is terrestrial in origin. Just like when any meteor hits and make a crater. What is the ratio of the ejecta – ET-vs-target materials? Something on the order of 1:250. That is like 99.75% target material – dirt and rock and whatever else was in the ground. And then it all gets spread around and carried off in the wind… So if van Hoesel can’t find it, she should ask for lessons in how they do their protocols.
That was the problem with some of the early skeptics – they couldn’t even follow protocol instructions, so they kept getting it wrong. And when they GOT it wrong, they claimed the error was by the other side. Hahahahahahaha what a bunch of numb nuts.
As to this:
“Steve, You’ve got it backwards. Every claim of “evidence” made by advocates of the impact hypothesis has been shown false”
No, YOU have it backward. If all you did was to follow the skeptics initial claims, you missed the rebuttals, dude. ALL of the skeptics’ claims have been fully rebutted. And I am NOT going to go look them all up for you. You seem to like finding stuff and pasting in links, so go find them yourself.
Steve,
The point is that advocates of your ludicrous hypothesis claim that the iridium in the mats is ET. Study after study shows that it is not. Since you persist in missing the point, further discussion is pointless.
It’s pointless to try to discuss science with a true believer, who for whatever reason is not amenable to reason or fact. Perhaps if you had ever studied geology your attitude might be more scientific.
sturgishooper –
Hahahaha – You, like Holliday and the sloppy skeptics pick one thing – in this case you point at iridium – and claim that it was never found, while ignoring the REST of the materials – the carbon spherules, lonsdaelite, etc.
In fact, iridium was only found at a few sites, and NONE of the gallery of markers was found at every site. NO ONE calimed that the nanodiamonds themselves were ET in origin. Nanodiamonds aren’t out in space. They are formed by the energy of an impact, and if you worked on them in the Atacama (which I strongly doubt) you would know this.
Peter Schultz specifically found the evidence of hexagonal nanodiamonds very early on, and the skeptics avoid mentioning that like it was the plague. They talk about cubic NDs and N-diamonds, but never hexagonals.
Like pack wolves, the skeptics try to pick off what they see as the weakest member of the impact materials and separate it from the rest of the herd, hoping that no one will notice that they are sweeping the other 90% of the LAB results under the carpet.
Todd Surovell was so bad at taking samples, completely blowing off the protocols and methodologies. His supposed “attempts at replication” were a joke. He sampled sediment layers in the wrong locations and taking FAR to thick of samples, which watered down his so-called “replication” samples. It was some of the worst science possible – yet he got top billing in the early going as the number one skeptic shooting down the YDIH.
If someone in a junior high science class can’t even follow protocols, he would flunk Lab 101. That is the level of non-science Surovell brought to the table. All of his efforts were thoroughly shot down in DYB team rebuttal papers – the ones you failed to read.
I won’t even go into the me-me-me efforts of Marc Boslough – which all ended up almost entirely touting himself as the solver of the Libyan desert glass.puzzle. Yeah, him and 5 other hypotheses. But that had nothing to do with the YDB – yet he is listed as a fellow skeptic.
sturgishooper – All you’ve done here is PARROT what the skeptics claimed, including pasting in links. Where re your OWN thoughts? You didn’t do any due diligence/b> by trying to see if the skeptics’ papers were rebutted. Here is a clue: They WERE.
One of the first video games was a small triangle, your “space ship”, that had to shoot a big asteroid, and then all the bits and pieces of asteroid, or you got hit and had to pay another quarter.
The taxman will just use this asteroid as an excuse to tax us another quarter.
Actually, its a “near hit”
I “nearly missed ya” means I barely hit you.
I “nearly hit ya” means I barely missed you.
Actually, a miss is a miss, near or not.
You could have a close miss, a far miss, or even a wild miss, but they are all misses.
The word near can be used as adverb, preposition, adjective, and verb, but nearly is a different word that is used only as an adverb with the meaning almost.
I hardly agree.
A miss or a Mrs.? It was close.
one of my all time favorite Onion covers:
http://o.onionstatic.com/images/8/8499/original/700.hq.jpg
So we are almost doomed?
It’s almost worse than we thought!
Ron White: I almost died once. Actually, i didn’t even get hurt. Near miss plane thing.
We might be . . . . . . . ALMOST WARM!
Velikovsky anyone? Funny how this is now accepted as a distinct possibility. In 1950, Velikovsky had the audacity to suggest that such collisions were not only possible, they had already happened repeatedly in the past and that the last near collision that caused global catastrophes and species extinctions had been recorded by the ancients around the world. He was laughed at, mocked and ridiculed mercilessly for suggesting such a thing and for arguing that the solar system wasn’t necessarily as stable as the astronomers at the time thought it was. Now it’s quite fashionable. Odd how fashions change in science.
Good for you for bringing up Velikovsky. You points are spot on.
By the way, if you have not seen it before, you might appreciate the following video by David Talbott who carries on with Velikovsky’s ideas, relating comparative mythology with possible instabilities in the solar system. At a minimum, Talbott’s ideas are very creative. (I believe he has a new updated version of this coming out in the near future.)
Symbols of an Alien Sky
Excellent points.
You might appreciate this video by David Talbott. He extends Velikovsky’s ideas by attempting to relate the overlapping symbols of comparative mythology with possible celestial phenomena seen by ancients, caused by instabilities in the planetary configurations. At a minimum, it’s very creative.
Symbols of an Alien Sky
Sorry for the double posts. I thought WP ate both, … but there they are.
Thanks for these posts. I’m very familiar with Talbot et al. In fact I am coming to the end of a new book project on Velikovsky – his ideas, the ugly controversy that followed and the latest developments, discoveries etc. that support his case; with a chapter on Talbot, Cardona and others. The book is tentatively titled “On the Shoulders of Heretics” which might give you an idea of its angle.
and remember how they all laughed at von Daniken.
Thanks for these posts. I am very familiar with Talbott et al. My main interest is in Velikovsky, but Talbott, Cardona and others certainly have some interesting takes on the theme. I’m not quite sure what to make of some of it though.
Max I went to episode 2 but got po’d when the video used the shuttle beak up it really turned me off. For the rest it just undermined the credibility for something i thought was a viable theory.
Do a little basic mental arithmetic. Anything which has already hit can’t hit again. Anything on a near earth orbit which comes around every 4500 years has already come past a million times and hasn’t hit yet. Most of the hitters already did it a long time ago.
Anything on a near earth orbit which comes around every million years or so and hasn’t hit yet has come past about 4500 times. The million to one chance of it coming around this year is less than your chance of winning the lottery. The chances it will hit are even less than that.
(I picked 4500 million years because that seems to be about when enough of the stuff flying around had hit to form a solid ball recognisable as the Earth.)
Throw your math on the trash heap. Do you really think that asteroids, especially large ones can come into proximity with other bodies in the solar system and not have their subsequent orbits not [affected]?
I would respectfully have to agree.
Sorry gnome, I do this orbital mechanics thing as part of my job. Orbits of solar system meteoroid objects are perturbed every time they have a close approach to another large body (i.e. planets).
For example, we have sent a number of space probes to outer planets by targeting a close approach to inner (including Earth) and outer planets and getting a “free gravity assist” from that large body to significantly change the probe’s orbit. A pass at about 8 times the moon’s distance from Earth is close enough to perturb the orbit of this asteroid slightly. So it won’t cross our path the same way next time. Same thing applies when an asteroid swings close to Venus, Mars, Jupiter (especially), Saturn, etc.
We’re getting better at finding these dark bodies, but we will have a hit. It’s a matter of time. Small chance of it happening in my lifetime (not losing any sleep over it), but not zero. A hit of anything sizable (a couple hundred meters across) will cause far more destruction/extinctions/climate change than even the worst 95%-confidence addition of CO2-induced heating could cause over centuries at the rate we’re going (but let’s keep spending tens of $billions each year to try to prevent CAGW, which present evidence seems to show will not happen and that I believe we have practically zero control over anyway…).
Bruce
The big danger is the Oort Cloud, with perhaps 6,000,000,000,000 objects in it. Lucky we have a moon. From the looks of it, it’s intercepted a lot of space trash, so far, and may still be doing so, without our knowledge. Our survival may depend on it at any time. Perturbation of those distant comets is what we oort to be worrying about.
Unfortunately asteroid orbits are not completely stable. They are perturbed by the major planets and there are occasionally collisions between asteroids which shatter into completely new orbits. The result is that asteroids are gradually being “swept up” by the planets, resulting in all those craters.
And then there are occasional bursts of comets coming in from the Oort cloud after being perturbed by stars passing “close” by. These are also either “swept up” or gradually disintegrate into meteor swarms.
The frequency of large impacts seems to have been fairly constant during the Phanerozoic, though with occasional “bursts”, e. g. at the Eocene/Oligocene border c. 40 million years ago.
You’ve obviously never heard of Earth-crossing Apollo asteroids. At last count 1400 of them pass close enough to warrant attention. And the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 was one of them. Boy, THAT one shouldn’t have been here! It should have hit a few million years ago. Right?
Sagan on Velikovsky:
Sagan was more of a science populist, a science celebrity, than a real scientist. He basked in public adoration, the media idolised him, but was no match for Velikovsky in open debate as was seen during the 1974 AAAS Symposium in San Francisco. He liked the limelight too much.
Thanks Gary, I probably watched this many years ago but had forgotten about it. A very pertinent message for today’s “settled science” on “climate change”.
KiwiHeretic, Carl Sagan had a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics, was a full professor at Cornell University, published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, and–unfortunately for Professor Velikovsky–was an acknowledged pioneer and expert on the atmosphere of Venus. He was indeed a “showman”, but if that disqualifies him, remember that Velikovsky was more than his equal in “showmanship”, if not in popularity.
I’ve read about the 1974 AAAS debate, and my impression is that Sagan, despite some irrelevant arguments, utterly demolished his opponent. I note that six decades after publication of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky’s Earth/Venus/Mars encounters, his “physics”, and his “revised” ancient chronology remain fringe science at best.
I also notice that your reply to the Sagan video was long on ad hominem and short on facts, exactly the kind of thing Sagan criticized his fellow scientists for in the video. 🙂
Well Max, per the video the claim is that these “planets” were unmoving in the sky. Now this seems as unlikely as such massive objects being tossed around the solar system yet not causing total and permanent orbital chaos. However there ARE objects that could remain stationary, have no planetary level gravitational affect, show plasma displays and also be quite large and those could have been a fleet of alien spaceships with a the purpose of studying life forms here.
Agree Kiwi. Thanks for the comment. I have read theories of asteroids & comments coming close to or hitting the earth. But never a mention of Velikovsky although they sound as if this is their origin.
KiwiHeritic,
Speaking of audacity, you may want to add a chapter on Georges Henri Lemaitre who, in 1923 postulated, based on the General Theory of Relativity, that the universe came from a [singularity]. He was shunned mocked and his work was suppressed and stolen by the big names in cosmology.
But now we know, the “scientific” egomaniacal b@stards, including Fred Hoyle were 100% wrong and LeMaitre was right.
Now, it is as if the Big Bang theory was always obvious. Nothing to see here… move along, move along.
So much for open minded scientists.
It actually was a very tiny bang. You could put a trillion of them into a thimble and still have almost as much room left over.
So it eventually has gotten to be a pretty big affair. Biggest damn thing we know about, but in the first 10^-43 seconds, it was small potatoes.
g
Thanks for this tip Paul. I hadn’t thought to include a passage or two to Lemaitre but I think I will now thanks to you. He is a classic case of a ‘heretic’ ahead of his time, later to be lionized as a genius. As I believe will be the case for Velikovsky some time in the future, but that will take another generation. My old classics lecturer Dr. Johnny Moffatt who was a strong supporter of Velikovsky, reckoned it would take fifty years before Velikovsky is accepted by the establishment. That was back in the eighties. I think it will take double that because of the recalcitrance and stubbornness inherent in orthodox and establishment thinking.
Even at ten times the distance of the Moon, it will cause an extinction of at least 10 species. (Prof. P.E, “False Alarm”, private communication).
This asteroid doesn’t appear on http://spaceweather.com/
Yes it does.
Calm down kidz, here’s a nice JPL orbitisl body simulator of this baby:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=5381%20Sekhmet&orb=1
Yes, there you can see (but note the date):
2015-May-17 08:34 (UT) Nominal Distance: 0.16133 (AU). 5381 Sekhmet (1991 JY)
From http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=5381%20Sekhmet;orb=1;old=0;cov=0;log=0;cad=1#cad
Also, http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ lists two other smaller visitors on March 17.
Could that be any worse than the years of accumulated damage from global warming with its “4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of heat every second”? /Sarc off
+1
Not to worry; on average, the Hiroshima nuclear explosion didn’t do very much damage; and the record of comet and asteroid hits shows that on average they don’t do much damage either.
So if I was you, I wouldn’t worry about it; on average !
G
Given a choice between a catastrophic collision with an asteroid, and more Oreskes selfies, I’ll take my chances with the former.
http://www.keithandthegirl.com/Show/Pictures/6B76FNN8SF6SJV25TPWN-Display.jpg
Max,
I know who that is. It isn’t Oreskes. It’s Mr. Selfie: Carlos Danger.
I prefer to think it’s oreskes. Boy is she ugly!
I think Oreskes was the brother of Electra; and damn near as destructive.
dbstealey, hats off to you for spotting my error.
http://ed_wp-content_v2.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/carlos-danger-beach-sombreros.jpg
Oh, George!
Somebody may have already pointed this out, but the Manhattan Project took place during WWII, in the 1940’s.
I think moving a large asteroid would actually be much more challenging than the Manhattan Project for many reasons.
I just finished reading a (unsparingly technical) book about the Orion project and indeed engineers in the early sixties came very close to realizing nuclear propelled rockets. Only fear of radioactive contamination of the atmosphere stopped this project. These rockets are more efficient the larger the payload and the equivalent of whole city blocks could easily be lifted into space. Such capacity is what you need to counter a threat of a mile wide rock hitting earth and it seems worth the effort.
The NASA money squandered on GISS’ Hansen and Schmidt instigated global warming scam could have been far better spent on researching anti-bolide missions, or better yet, not spent at all.
I’m glad to see that Congress is at last considering getting NASA out of the “climate change” business and concentrating all the lunacy in NOAA, as I advocated to my members of Congress long ago.
I came close to being the first fisherman to land a 200 pound Tarpon (Megalops Atlanticus (I think)) with a fly rod, at Homosassa Florida. Had it rolled over alongside the boat, ready to gaff in about 20 minutes, on a 15# test tippet.
Coming close; no matter how close, still gets you no cigar .
I busted it off, because of a wind knot in the tippet. No cigar. Same goes for asteroids.
g
In case anyone is wondering what a 200 lb (90 kg) tarpon looks like …
http://gofishcharters.com/tarponclub/images/220+lb-tarpon.jpg
“far too close for comfort”
I disagree. I am very comfortable with that distance.
In fact, I will be sleeping like a baby, not worried in the slightest bit.
Who are the bed-wetters who are losing sleep and find this to be uncomfortable?
A lightning bolt from earth would almost certainly destroy this asteroid before it the planet, the same way one destroyed the recent meteor over Russia.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/02/25/russian-meteor-another-shock-to-the-system/
That’s interesting. See my comment above about Velikovsky. I’m currently writing a book about this very issue and the Velikovsky controversy.
“Such a ship could be built in a year or two, if it was a priority, and would be more than capable of pushing a dangerous asteroid into a different orbit.”
I think not.
Not with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on the outs again.