In light of what happened yesterday, this story is even more relevant now. It was written before the meteor event in Russia.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 makes its closest approach at 2:24 p.m. EST/1924 GMT today. One wonders if yesterday’s meteor in Russia wasn’t some parts of the asteroid fragmented in a deep space collision eons ago and in a similar trajectory hours ahead. It may also be simply coincidence. [UPDATE: NASA has issued a statement on this, see below.]
While politicians, their activist friends, and pundits caterwaul over a few tenths of a degree change in the global temperature over the last 100 years, with some Ehrlich-like nutballs even claiming it will cause extinction of humanity, today might be a good day to recognize a real extinction level challenge humanity faces.
A Warning From the Asteroid Hunters
The likelihood in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima A-bomb: 30%.
In the game of cosmic roulette that is our solar system, we just got lucky. Earth will get a very close shave on Friday, Feb. 15, when Asteroid DA14 passes just 17,000 miles from our planet. That is less than the distance from New York to Sydney and back, or the distance the Earth travels around the sun in 14 minutes. We are dodging a very large bullet.
The people of Earth also are getting a reminder that even in our modern society, our future is affected by the motion of astronomical bodies. The ancients were correct in their belief that the heavens affect life on Earth—just not in the way they imagined. Sometimes those heavenly bodies actually run into Earth. That is why we must make it our mission to find asteroids before they find us.
The last major asteroid impact on Earth was on June 30, 1908, when one about the size of an office building (140 feet across) slammed into Siberia with a destructive energy 700 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That asteroid devastated a region roughly the size of the San Francisco Bay area. Asteroid 2012 DA14, which will be passing over our heads on Friday, is about the same size as the asteroid that devastated Siberia’s Tunguska region. . . .
The chance of another Tunguska-size impact somewhere on Earth this century is about 30%. That isn’t the likelihood that you will be killed by an asteroid, but rather the odds that you will read a news headline about an asteroid impact of this size somewhere on Earth. Unfortunately, that headline could be about the destruction of a city, as opposed to an unpopulated region of Siberia. . . .
The chance in your lifetime of an even bigger asteroid impact on Earth—with explosive energy of 100 megatons of TNT—is about 1%. Such an impact would deliver many times the explosive energy of all the munitions used in World War II, including the atomic bombs.
Full story here at the WSJ.
Meanwhile, Barbara Boxer and friends want to create a tax to put billions into climate research while the asteroid program gets by on a shoestring. It only takes one asteroid to ruin your whole day, global warming, not so much.
==========================================================
NASA’s Spaceweather.com website writes:
At 9:30 am on Friday, Feb. 15th, asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet’s surface. This will put it well inside the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, closer than any asteroid of the same size has come since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s. Researchers speculate that Earth’s gravity might even cause seismic activity on the 50m-wide space rock. Click to view a computer simulation of the flyby, courtesy of NASA:
During the hours around closest approach, the asteroid will brighten until it resembles a star of 8th magnitude. Theoretically, that’s an easy target for backyard telescopes. The problem is speed. The asteroid will be racing across the sky, moving almost a full degree (or twice the width of a full Moon) every minute. That’s going to be hard to track. Only the most experienced amateur astronomers are likely to succeed. For the rest of us, NASA will broadcast the asteroid’s flyby on NASA TV.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about the same size as previous asteroids responsible for the Meteor Crater in Arizona and the Tunguska Event in Siberia. Unlike those objects, however, 2012 DA14 will not hit Earth. Even if seismic activity breaks the asteroid apart, there is no danger; the fragments would continue along the same non-intersecting path as the original asteroid.
=============================================================
UPDATE: (via NASA’s spaceweather.com)
It is natural to wonder if this event has any connection to today’s record-setting flyby of asteroid 2012 DA14. NASA has issued the following statement:
“The trajectory of the Russian meteorite was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object. Information is still being collected about the Russian meteorite and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14’s trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“But there’s a 75% chance it’ll happen over the ocean somewhere and thus do no damage, other than providing a light show for remote sensors. ”
Well there would be a lot of water turned to water vapour rather quickly. How much would depend on the size of the meteor. You know that real GHG that the MSM never talks about? The one that dwarfs all the others combined. Yea, that water vapour.
omnologos says:
February 15, 2013 at 3:12 am.. “So the asteroid is missing us by just 20 minutes”
That’s the accuracy window of a Melbourne train..
In 1998 my daughter and I were observing with an 8″ SCT on the eastern slopes of the Big Horn
Mountains in WY and observed a green bolide not too dissimilar to the movies on line of this
event. Turned night into day for a few seconds and cast significant shadows. This event appeared to
occur deep in the northeastern Big Horns but may have been farther away than it appeared. Was
a hell of a show though. The online images of todays event were very similar. Such events may
occur more often than is believed but in very remote areas.
A large asteroid struck the ocean just off of Chesapeake Bay around 35.5 million years ago (http://www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/02files/Earth_Images_10.html#Chesapeake). It’s estimated that the wave produced was so tall that it may have streamed over the Blue Ridge mountains.
We may have just passed through a bit of a swarm, Last wednesday In victoria Australia I saw a large meteorite traveling horizontally dull red, it then broke into four dull red parts and slowly faded. The big one might have a lot of mates with it.
The one I saw last night was red. Same colour as a car taillight.
At least we have a good model for Tunguska now.
The Russian meteor was about 10 tons, was emitting a massive amount of EM light energy as it rapidly burned-up in the atmosphere, airburst 10 km to 30 kms high, shattered windows, damaged buildings, knocked a few people near the airblast off their feet and left no real crater (no fragments from the meteor have been verified that I am aware of). Airburst.
The Tunguska meteor was about 500,000 tons, emitted a massive amount of light and heat energy as it rapidly burned-up in the atmosphere (friction and gravitational potential energy converted to real EM energy – just want to get some controversy goin’), enough light and heat energy to set trees on fire 20 kms away and 5 kms to 25 kms below the object (maybe 40 kms total distance), airburst 5 kms to 30 kms high, knocked trees down for 20 kms around, knocked people off their feet 50 kms away and left no crater. Airburst, 500,000 tons converted to dust, vapour and energy. I guess I’m interested in where the energy came from – it has to be held in the molecules in the first place.
Tunguska in 1908 was just a lot bigger than Friday’s Russia meteor.
A very strange trajectory for an asteroid. I always believed that asteroids orbit the sun in the same plane as the planets do, and only comets can come in across the plane. It sounds as if there are asteroids in orbits whose planes are perpendicular to the ecliptic. Very strange.
I think the Russian meteor also tells us that the last thing we want to do with a 500,000 ton Tunguska/DA2014 meteoroid is blow it up in space while leaving the debris moving along the same track and just create 50,000 10 ton Russian meteor airbursts scattered all over the planet.
Take the hit instead or move its trajectory.
Bill Illis says:
February 16, 2013 at 4:38 am
“…………………..and left no real crater ”
http://translate.google.no/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vg.no%2Fnyheter%2Futenriks%2Fartikkel.php%3Fartid%3D10100521&act=url
The claim that the probability of a Tunguska like event occurring in the next century is wrong, and based on a misreading of this article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/phenom_jan95.html?c=y&page=1
It says that an event capable of knocking down trees occurs once in every 300 years, or once every 1000 years over land. It does not say how far those trees would be from the point of detonation of the asteroid and how large the asteroid would be.
The Tunguska event was equivalent to a 12 megaton (700 Hiroshima bombs) detonation at an altitude of 6 miles and knocked down trees over an area covering 850 square miles.
If a Tunguska event occurred once every 300 years, the historical record and oral traditions of pre literate cultures would be littered with such events and it is not.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap071114.html
The animation of the flyby. that is not it’s relative speed. It’s speeded up. I’d be inteterested to see a animation of it’s true flyby speed.
back to revelation 8 and the two ‘trumpets’. See anything…………familiar??
‘…….The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, 9 a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
10 The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— 11 the name of the star is Wormwood.[a] A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter……….’
This post caught my attention as I found it unbelievable:
It appears to be either a joke or deliberate disinformation. Neither Flagstaff Festival of Science at http://www.nofs.navy.mil/festsci/list/astname.html, nor IAU Minor Planet Center (IAU = International Astronomical Union; French UAI = Union Astronomique Internationale) at http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPNames.html#I list an asteroid named “Itys”. The only ones beginning “It” are:
(14551) Itagaki
(9233) Itagijun
(477) Italia
(22370) Italocalvino
(918) Itha
(1151) Ithaka
(5737) Itoh
(25243) Itokawa
(7852) Itsukushima
(21540) Itthipanyanan
(133552) Itting-Enke
(1596) Itzigsohn
The closest to “Itys” are (918) Itha and (5737) Itoh. According to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/918_Itha aphelion = 3.402 AU, perihelion = 2.336 AU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5737_Itoh aphelion = 3.0719928, perihelion = 1.9895450
Neither comes anywhere near Earth, and both are main belt asteroids.
Thanks for wasting my time! (/sarc)
Don’t let him waste yours.
” I guess I’m interested in where the energy came from – it has to be held in the molecules in the first place.”
Not sure but think how much energy you would have to use to get 500.000 tons to move at the silly speeds they usually have. And then think of Earths atmosphere as braking these objects quickly. It’s severe friction together with kinetic energy? that makes the surface of these objects silly warm?
What is the specific ultimate source of the energy that causes friction force to make an object hotter. What causes matter to heat up when it falls into a gravity field. Where does the heat come from when a gas is compressed.
I’m thinking along the lines of E=MC^2. In a fission or fusion reaction, Mass is lost in the reaction and that lost Mass gets converted to electro-magnetic radiation (photons) and kinetic energy (particle radiation). The C^2 makes this an extremely energetic reaction. The source of the energy is that the total amount of Strong Nuclear Force required to keep the nucleus of the new element(s) together is lower after the reaction. This is what is really converted to EM and kinetic energy. The Neutrons/Protons in the nucleus of the new element(s) can be bound together with less Strong Force required. And the Strong Force is extremely strong over extemely small distances. I guess it is also related to mass then and the Higgs field.
Friction energy could be created because the particles in each individual molecule have a certain amount of kinetic energy and when those particles are compressed by another molecule, the kinetic energy is redistributed/given up until the compression ends and the particles in the molecule bounce back to their previous state. A temporary release of energy.
But I’m looking for the actual physics source which makes objects heat up from friction and from falling into a gravity field. How does it actually do this.
The cores of developing Stars heat up to 10 million Kelvin before any type of fusion reaction occurs. Brown Dwarf Stars/Jupiter/the Core of the Earth stays hot for billions of years even though there is no nuclear fusion. Meteors heat up from friction (and falling into a gravity field like mass in a star). But what Force is tapped into to generate this heat (EM radiation).
When compared to the areas of dense human habitation, the world is a pretty big place. If you combine the surface areas of remote regions such as the oceans, Gobi desert, Siberia and eastern Russia, desolate areas of India, the middle eastern deserts, northern Africa and Sahara, along with the remote areas of Australia, Northern Canada, the arctic and antarctic regions probably 85% or more of the planet are so remote and sparsely populated that an event of the Chelyabinsk class would almost go unnoticed except for a few local herdsmen. That means that the general public is only made aware of between 1/6th and 1/7th of the actual number of such events.
Estimates are that about 500 impacts a year actually reach the ground but only a handful are significant enough to show up on weather monitoring systems like radar or weather satellite images. Frequency of a Chelyabinsk class impactor (10 meter) is estimated to be about a once every 10.5 years or so event.
Even more rare are impactors detected prior to their entry into the atmosphere such as 2008 TC3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_TC3
That being said, since such encounters are assumed to be totally random there is no reason at all that would prevent multiple impacts occurring over a short period of time, as random events occasionally cluster. If however as discussed in the book “Black swan (N. Taleb)” encounters with large impactors could actually be long tail distributions rather than truly Gaussian random events, it is conceivable that there could be periodic clustered events over long time scales.
Science already recognizes this in the late heavy bombardment period theory, there is no reason to exclude the possibility that something stirred up the Ort cloud or the asteroid belt and some day in the future we could experience a period of much more frequent encounters with near earth objects, and our puny historical record may totally misrepresent the true probability of such bombardments on the longer scale time periods.
It would be wise to use our technological means to set up a planetary monitoring system which would have a reasonable likelihood of identifying objects larger than or equal to the Chelyabinsk object prior to impact, even if the warning was only a few hours or 10’s of minutes that would be useful information to have available for people to take protective actions..
Larry
Bill Illis says:
February 16, 2013 at 4:38 am
The Russian meteor was about 10 tons
A good illustration of the science illiteracy here [and in the media]. It is also estimated that the meteor was 10 meter across. Such a body would weigh of the order of 10,000 tons, not 10 tons.
Bill Illis says:
February 17, 2013 at 4:04 am
Where does the heat come from when a gas is compressed.
From the work done compressing it. You have to expend energy compressing the gas. That energy is put into the gas and makes it hot.
“What is the specific ultimate source of the energy that causes friction force to make an object hotter. What causes matter to heat up when it falls into a gravity field. Where does the heat come from when a gas is compressed.”
Mass and kenetic energy(speed of mass hitting the Earths atmosphere)?
I guess I’m interested in where the energy came from – it has to be held in the molecules in the first place.
Every object that is in motion has kinetic energy. This energy depends on its mass and velocity given by the equation E = 1/2mv^2. And if there is a great decrease in v, then the energy usually manifests itself in the form of heat. If an object fell on the moon, which more or less has a vacuum, then the heat comes on contact with the ground. On Earth, the atmosphere slows things down and the difference between 1/2mv^2 before contacting the atmosphere and afterwards determines the amount of heat produced. Of course when sound is produced, and other energy conversions occur, they have to be factored in as well such that the total energy is conserved, regardless what form it has at any time.
Kinetic energy is also relative. For example, if you were on a train going 100 km/h, and you held a rock in your hand, the rock would have no kinetic energy relative to you. But if you held the rock outside a window and let it go just before hitting someone, it could kill that person because relative to the person that is not moving on the ground, the rock has a huge amount of kinetic energy which could be deadly.
eworrall1 says:
February 15, 2013 at 3:11 am
“I’m surprised the asteroid isn’t shattered by such a close approach to the Earth. ”
The effect is dependent upon gravitational tidal forces, i.e., the difference in the gravitational force felt by the side of the object closest to the gravity source and the force felt by the side farthest away. The near side accelerates more quickly in the direction of the gravity source than does the far side (because the near side is closer to the source, the pull is stronger than the pull on the far side), stretching the object, and possibly tearing it into pieces. With small objects, the difference is not large enough to pull them apart, unless they’re extremely close to a very small, but very strong (e.g., a black hole) source of gravity. For instance, if you’re free-falling after jumping from an aircraft with your feet down and head up, your feet would feel the earth’s pull more strongly than your head, but because the distance from your feet to your head is very small, the effect is very small and not enough to overcome the forces that bind your parts together.
Well, here is old WUWT post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/27/found-solar-cycles-on-another-star/
I was looking for this magnetic cycling in stars and this meteorite event happened so I thought, what if this was just a tiny hand-sized rock wrapped in compressed gas? That would explain why not lots of evidence of meteorite explosion. And Tungusta also. The Oort shell makes us a bubble system (?) so inside we are very compressed?
Luckily, it also hit off center and so travelled horizontally, or slightly less than, extending the time it was in the atmosphere where molecules could whither it down. Had it hit perpendicularly, it may have made it to ground relatively intact. Had it hit the ocean in such a scenario, super cavitation would play a role perhaps, until it hit the ocean floor even (maybe?). The size of the resulting Toon Army needs to be determined, the role of supercavitation in such a vertical descent into the ocean, and what can be done in the event a inbound perpendicular collision is imminent, known, and forcasted.
Jeff, Robert:
I think you can safely call BS on eco-geek’s “Itys” fantasy. I did find another reference, in a Jan 12 2012 comment on sott.net, and it’s a hoot.
My favorite is the claim that it’s in Earth orbit and travelling at 10.5 miles per second, when Earth’s escape velocity in LEO is only 10.9 km/s or about 6.8 mi/s. But the idea of an object 2-4 miles in diameter passing through Earth’s atmosphere about once a decade and staying pretty much unnoticed isn’t far behind.
So if these happen every 100 years, where did the one fall before Tunguska, in the 1800s….and in the 1700s, 1600s, 1500s, …