From NASA’s Spaceweather.com and NASA JPL Twitter feed. It only takes one missed space rock to ruin your day.
On Friday November 6th at 2132 UT (16:32/ 4:32PM EST) asteroid 2009 VA barely missed Earth when it flew just 14,000 km above the planet’s surface. For comparison, Earth’s diameter is 12,756.1 km. That near miss was well inside the “Clarke Belt” of geosynchronous satellites.(35,786 km/22,236 mi)
Friday’s (Nov 6) flyby of asteroid 2009 VA is the third closest on record. (That we know about.)
If it had hit, the ~6-meter wide space rock would have disintegrated in the atmosphere as a spectacular fireball, causing no significant damage to the ground. But the fact that there was so little warning is troubling.
2009 VA was discovered just 15 hours before closest approach by astronomers working at the Catalina Sky Survey.
While millions worry about CO2, there seems to be little worry nor action about this list:
It is a threat we can actually develop technology for to do something about.
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Talk about scary. That’s not a rock, look at the eyes. I’m calling Nancy right now.
I watch “Deep Impact” last night!….. :-0
Of course, a Carrington Event super solar flare is much more likely to occur than any major asteroid impact or supervolcano eruption — perhaps about one chance in 45 during each 11-year solar cycle. The last such event in 1859 was preceded by the deep solar minimum of 1856. It has been feared that the intense geomagnetic storm induced by such an event could generate powerful electric currents in modern electrical equipment sufficient to cause widespread systemic damage that would take years to repair. I hope we are well prepared for any such event — perhaps with a good supply of candles.
Glenn (16:41:25), how else does one go about removing the threat? You have to think a little more on your view. Attaching a solar sail to an asteroid to change it’s trajectory requires easy access to space. Broaden your thinking. Anonymoose (14:39:14), the tech is not that far out of reach. There have been some great strides made recently in the materials required for the ribbon. Carlos(14:43:27): Don’t you think spending billions to “adjust” our atmosphere isn’t a Sc Fi scenario. Don’t appreciate negativity and small mindedness. There is enough of that in the world already. Besides, I am not alone in my thinking. There are a lot of very knowledgeable people who believe this is a good direction to go. Google space elevator. Start thinking of the potential of space access with zero energy expenditure. Space is not a hospitable place for humans, but that does not mean we shouldn’t make use of resources available to us. All the energy sources we could ever need, with very little damage to earth or the other planets. Sci-Fi indeed, ……
But don’t you all know that Global Warming is increasing the risk of asteroids hitting the Earth? there is correlation between CO2 concetration and near misses, surely there MUST be one… LOL
I have made a 3d animation of the encounter, illustrating the orbit of 2009 VA.
It is just over 1 minute, about 3.5MB
http://home.online.no/~arnholm/org/vdo/2009_VA_sim.mpeg
David Ball (17:13:55) :
“Glenn (16:41:25), how else does one go about removing the threat? You have to think a little more on your view. Attaching a solar sail to an asteroid to change it’s trajectory requires easy access to space. Broaden your thinking.”
I already have a headache, I don’t need for my head to explode. What you really need is science officer Spock to compute your trajectories and Scotty to supply the warp drive with fuel, then get the rubber band man to shoot you out there.
That is the most childish rebuttal I have ever seen. Why are you even reading a science blog? “One reason is that no one even knew about it till 15 hours before it went sailing through our satellite paths. If you have any suggestions about how we could tag rocks flying thru space at enormous speeds, share them.” I had a suggestion and you dismissed it without even looking into it. Very weak. Seek counseling.
“according to NASA-NEO the odds it will thread the ”keyhole” in space and hit us in 2036 are 4.3 E-06; i.e.: VERY small.”
Could someone please post a link to more information about these :keys” please? I have read about them recently here in WUWT, but I don’t know anything about them. Thanks.
kim (08:53:13) :
anna v. 7:29:24
kim:
Global government is not necessary for preventing asteroid strikes. Global co-operation would be helpful.
=============================
Neither it is necessary for controlling CO2 even if it needed control. Nevertheless it is used as a lever towards world structures and government.
Norm/Calgary asks for links on the ”keyhole” related to near-miss by Apophis in 2029. For one good in-depth article, see:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=17666
For a bunch of other references, just Google ”apophis” + ”keyhole”; or for a shorter list add ”gravitational” to the search window.
Forget the asteriod movies. These things are hard to see except when they are really close, and whizzng by after missing. Otherwise, Bedazzlement as something grows brighter yet appears to hang motionless.
Depending on the size of the asteroid, speed, direction towards earth, etc., a missile defense program could work. But if the asteroid was massive…not sure how effective terrestrial countermeasures would work. That would require some Interesting physics to figure out.
David Ball (18:39:28) :
“That is the most childish rebuttal I have ever seen. Why are you even reading a science blog? “One reason is that no one even knew about it till 15 hours before it went sailing through our satellite paths. If you have any suggestions about how we could tag rocks flying thru space at enormous speeds, share them.” I had a suggestion and you dismissed it without even looking into it. Very weak. Seek counseling.”
So you’re G. Karst (15:57:31)? Dude, it isn’t the ones we know about that are the problem, it’s the ones that we don’t know about. They couldn’t be “tagged” till we knew about them, and then we’d, well, know about them and could keep track of them. Besides, the technology to tag an asteroid in an oddball orbit is nonexistent, and likely not possible till something like warp drive, near unlimited power in a small space. That’s just one problem of tagging an asteroid. It’s science fiction.
As to your concern about getting people into “near space” with space elevator’s because of the threat of asteroid collisions, you should realize that space is very cold and void of breathing air, and there is only room on the space station for a limited number of people. The resources needed to provide room and sustain for a substantial number of people away from earth far exceeds our capabilities now or anytime in the far distant future. The technology just isn’t anywhere close for any of this, including space elevators. It’s science fiction. And the only reason to do all this would be to escape a very large impact. Small asteroids paths could possibly be moved with sails, but to consider this with the real danger, the large ones, is also science fiction, not much less so than to fantasize about using the earth as a giant spaceship using jet tubes.
What’s the big deal? I’m sure Al Gore can solve the problem with a cap and trade program.
IIRC there is a couple of kiloton equivalent event from an in air burn up / impact about 2 x per year. The early “nuclear bomb detector” satellites were giving about 2 false alerts per year until the started filtering for the “double peak” in luminosity that a real nuke has.
We do live in a shooting gallery.
BTW, I believe that the 1908 even was a ‘roughly every 100 +/- a dozen or so year event.
All that Cap & Trade hocus pocus can’t catch a single space rock.
All that wasted climate prediction supercomputing power.
No, they should be using those Terraflops for the next movie, Inconvenient Invasion of the Environmental Snatchers.
The alien race is now seeding the planet, right under Gore’s nose. C02 isn’t toxic to terrestrial life, it’s toxic to the aliens. Hmm…. maybe they already abducted him and that isn’t the real Al Gore. A sharp investigative reporter has begun to notice that Gore eats strange things at the Party Banquets. As time goes on, he also notices that … oh, sorry, don’t want to spoil the movie for you. Oops.
Just reminding everyone we did get hit by a bigger one about a month ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/28/asteroid-explosion-over-indonesia/D
well, obviously detection is getting better. I recall around august 2003 or 2004 that there was a newly detected asteroid that was definitely in the large bus size realm which was expected to pass by at a little under 2 lunar distances and I prep’ed for imaging it for about 2 months. A few weeks before the anticipated event, it came out that something like a stadium size or perhaps even 1/4 mile dia. rock went whizzing past about 1/3 lunar distance that somehow I’d failed to hear about prior to the event. Turns out nobody spotted it for 3 days after closest approach. That is also still around the time David Levy was stating that the most likely impact scenario was that we’d detect the incoming rock 10 seconds after it entered the atmosphere.
Tonight, Nov. 8th there will be a Discovery Channel presentation on “Surviving 2012”, in which a discussion of magnetic fields will figure prominently.
Recent field work in Africa has revealed fossil remains of Homo Habilis, the first primate with a large brain case, also one of the first to use stone tools. Further research showed that the climate in Africa was very unstable during the time of Homo Habilis, with droughts and wet periods on a time scale that altered the formation of forests and savanna. They were able to adapt to this varying climate by evolving superior intelligence.
Ironically, our legacy is climate change. We owe our existence to the ongoing adaption to the climate.
On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction — toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface.
I wouldn’t know how to do the math on it, but the kinetic energy involved in plowing through 12,500′ of water, then still having enough energy to send out rock that far is both stunning, and humbling.
DaveF (08:59:40) : “Martin, you can’t go wishing an asteroid to fall on the Danish capital. I’ve heard it said that Copenhagen is wonderful, wonderful.”
How do they get it into those little round cans?
I guess Glenn is unaware that we have “tagged” NEOs recently. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html – I cannot remember the name of the vehicle that flew through the comets tale a few years ago. Must have been SciFi.
“It is a threat we can actually develop technology for to do something about” How ? If they are big enough to be detected in time they are too big to be deflected or destroyed, if they are too small to be detected in time, well, there is no time. I have no doubt that some day we could have the technology to do something about them, but that day is very long ways off.
Tom Trevor (16:48:45) It is not as far off as some would have you believe. The ribbon is the most difficult hurdle of the space elevator and that is currently at 8% of the strength required. This is within the realm of possibility. The rest of the tech required is currently feasible. The space station right now has the living space of a mid-range three bedroom home. As I am writing this there are 13 people living on the space station. A.C.Clarke predicted satellites 50 years before implementation. He was a firm believer in the space elevator and all its potential advantages. His book, “The Fountains of Paradise” is actually an interesting read, even if you are not a Sci-Fi fan. The man had vision.