Guest essay by Eric Worrall-
In 2013, NASA decided to take time out from creating spectacularly useless climate models, and reactivated their Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer programme. The result is moderately terrifying – 8 previously unknown near Earth asteroids with catastrophic impact potential have been discovered, along with a host of smaller bodies which have the potential to wipe out a city.
According to The Register;
In December 2013, NASA re-activated the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) and in the twelve months since the project discovered three new comets and 40 previously-unknown near-earth objects, eight of which have Earth-bonking potential.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/16/ninety_new_doom_asteroids_found_in_2014/
The JPL website contains more information about the discoveries of various space survey projects;
“WISE was launched into a low-Earth orbit in December 2009, and surveyed the full sky in four infrared wavelength bands (3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 µm) with a 40 cm (16 in) diameter infrared telescope until the frozen hydrogen cooling the telescope was depleted in September 2010. Throughout this time, NEOWISE searched the WISE data for moving objects. Starting in October 2010, the mission was renamed NEOWISE, and the survey continued for an additional four months using the two shortest wavelength detectors. The spacecraft was placed into hibernation in February 2011, after completing its search of the inner solar system.
Recently, NEOWISE has been brought out of hibernation to learn more about the population of near-Earth objects and comets that could pose an impact hazard to the Earth. A three-year survey in the 3.4 and 4.6 µm infrared bands began in December 2013 in which NEOWISE will rapidly characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs) and obtain accurate measurements of their diameters and albedos (how much light an object reflects). NEOWISE is equally sensitive to both light-colored asteroids and the optically dark objects that are difficult for ground-based observers to discover and characterize. Just six days after the restart of the survey, NEOWISE discovered its first potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid, 2013 YP139.
The JPL data table is a little tricky to read, but if I’ve understood it correctly, you take the “H” value (absolute magnitude – a measure of “brightness”) from the asteroid table http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Dangerous.html , and look up that value in the diameter conversion chart, to get a range of possible diameters http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Sizes.html . The diameter estimate is a range, because the size of the asteroid is not the only factor which affects the magnitude / brightness of the object.
YP139 has a “H” value of 21.6, which corresponds to a possible diameter of 130 – 300 metres.
To put this into perspective, the Chelyabinsk meteor which caused a 500 kiloton explosion over Russia in 2013 was estimated to be around 20 metres in diameter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor A 300 metre object has the potential to cause (300 ^ 3 / 20 ^ 3) * 500 kilotons = 1.6 Gigaton explosion. An explosion of this magnitude, especially an ocean strike, could create gigantic Tsunamis, and would severely disrupt the global climate for several years, possibly longer.
Its nice to know that NASA occasionally takes a break from climate bothering, long enough to do something space related, but I’m mildly horrified that a project this important appears to be so far down the list of priorities, that the project was mothballed for a year while the survey satellite stood waiting for a refuel. Granted that a major Asteroid strike is a low probability event, but the consequences are potentially catastrophic – a big ocean strike could kill millions, maybe even billions of people.
As the Chelyabinsk wakeup call demonstrated, the risk of a damaging meteor impact is not a possibility which should be neglected.
Addendum- For the record, there are currently 1533 potentially hazardous near Earth Asteroids -Anthony
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http://www.space.com/622-asteroid-chance-hitting-earth-2029-watched-carefully.html
Year 2029 could be of some concern. Read article.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130110.html
It looks like they have recently lowered the threat in 2036 to next to nothing and do not think year 2029 is a threat. . Still I wonder if in year 2029 when this asteroid passes very close to the earth if the gravity from the earth exerted on this asteroid may change it’s future orbit?
That has already been calculated. Now, being a skeptic, I would think that if there was a real threat that Apophis would strike us in 2036 they still wouldn’t acknowledge it. Think of the panic of the under educated, the havoc on the economic markets, the nut jobs coming out of the woodwork and all the other BS that would occur with that type of announcement. By then, though, I will be old enough to hope it does hit so I can go out with a bang!
NASA’s ideas about the structures of the Universe are incredibly naive. NASA tells us the Sun is nearly entirely hydrogen and helium, when we can detect large quantities of much heavier elements. NASA tells us comets are dirty balls of ice, when we can clearly see they are rocky. NASA tells us the OORT cloud is fine dust and water ice, while we observe planets and asteroids. NASA tells us we have entered an Interplanetary dust cloud, which they claim is made of hydrogen and helium gases.
NASA, despite its ability to send machinery into space, is guided by academics who believe the Universe is made out of hydrogen and calculus equations. We will all be extinct before NASA realizes the Universe is an eternal structure of material centered around the element of iron, which is constantly creating and destroying matter.
NASA says the Sun is moving with the stars of the Milky Way, and yet the evidence shows our star is part of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy and is perpendicularly striking the magnetic plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system is entering a huge hole punched into the Milky Way magnetic plane by the passage of other stars before us.
The increase in geological activity (seismicity and volcanism) since 1994, the increase in meteors, asteroids, and comets, and the unusual behavior of the Sun are all caused by our solar system entering the Magnetic Plane of the Milky Way. The Interstellar dust is not hypothetical hydrogen and helium, it is debris from an eternity of exploding stars and planets. The structure of the Milky Way Magnetic Plane is a larger scale version of the rings of Saturn and other gas giants.
It is incredible that our academics could be so blind and stupid to not see this. It is time to completely overhaul our understanding of physics and apply a proper physics understanding to the structures of the Universe.
The sun is not massive enough for the other contents to mean anything except in spectroscopy. It only has enough mass to make Oxygen at most and that won’t happen for a few billion more years. The only important cycles in our sun at the moment is the H to He reaction. In 4-6 billion years we’ll start seeing 3 He making Carbon in the core, but then the earth will be inside the solar atmosphere so nobody will be living on the earth anyway.
In 3 – 4 billion years politicians will be arguing whether it is worthwhile to build deep space colony ships or would it be better just to charge a “Red Sun” tax on essential life products.
Owen – Heavy metals would not float to the surface of the Sun if the core is made of helium. If the gravitational model is correct, there should be no heavy elements in the spectrometry at all. The point is that the galaxies have existed far longer than our star and the Magnetic Plane is populated with more than just hydrogen and helium. It is the source of the increase in asteroids coming our way. If you go to spaceweather.com and browse the history of calculated orbits for the observed fireballs, you will see that a significant number of them come from outside the solar system. Also, despite their best efforts to calculate the fireballs’ orbits based on their trajectories, it becomes apparent that most of the sporadics come from a preferred direction relative to the Sun. We are being bombarded by significant-sized objects from outside of the solar system, and they are not hydrogen and helium balls.
David, you are correct.
Our planet is not a stationary object with all other things being stationary. All systems in the Universe, past, present and future, are moving. At this point in time, I would suggest they are all falling towards each other, not flying away. This is why our little galaxy is falling into the Milky Way which is falling towards Andromeda which is falling towards the Great Attractor.
“The JPL data table is a little tricky to read, but if I’ve understood it correctly, you take the “H” value (absolute magnitude – a measure of “brightness”) from the asteroid table http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Dangerous.html , and look up that value in the diameter conversion chart, to get a range of possible diameters http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Sizes.html . The diameter estimate is a range, because the size of the asteroid is not the only factor which affects the magnitude / brightness of the object.
YP139 has a “H” value of 21.6, which corresponds to a possible diameter of 130 – 300 metres.
To put this into perspective, the Chelyabinsk meteor which caused a 500 kiloton explosion over Russia in 2013 was estimated to be around 20 metres in diameter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor A 300 metre object has the potential to cause (300 ^ 3 / 20 ^ 3) * 500 kilotons = 1.6 Gigaton explosion. An explosion of this magnitude, especially an ocean strike, could create gigantic Tsunamis, and would severely disrupt the global climate for several years, possibly longer.”
So this is all just estimates and worry based on models??
500 kiloton? where are the error bars.. they call this science.
gigantic Tsunamis?
we need to do some controlled experiments and see exactly how high the Tsunamis would be.
are we talking 20 meter tsunnamis or 23meter Tsunamis? These guys just want funding.
And look at the range of possible diameters? 130-300 meters? how can such an inaccurate estimate
even be useable? dont they know that we need actual measurements of the diameters and not estimates?
hehe.
here is a funny thing to try.
take every skeptical argument or tactic you know and apply it to everything.
Like
C02 is trace gas how can more of a trace thing improve plant growth.
“Steven Mosher
January 19, 2015 at 9:32 am
So this is all just estimates and worry based on models??”
Just like “climate change worry”, eh?
This is not at all like the climate change worry. There is no proof that man made co2 will have a catastrophic effect on Earth, but there is proof that asteroids can, and have caused catastrophic global effects.
Also, the so-called solutions to global warming just happen to be in line with a far left political agenda which seeks to deconstruct the civilized world, while keeping third world peoples in the dark and dependent on the UN.
The “solutions” to an asteroid strike could be politically agnostic while providing spin-off technologies that will benefit everyone. It could also have the effect of focusing NASA back on space, and get them out of environmental politics.
When they start spending 100’s of billions of tax payer dollars, seek control of my personal decisions, and threaten to crash the world economy I will be more concerned. You are right Mosh, bad science is everywhere. I get a little more grumpy with the bad science that is seeking to alter/manage world socio-economics.
I agree wholly with your skeptical outlook, Mosher. No need to disdain climate alarmism in order to wring hands over asteroids and meteoroids.
Do you ever think before you type?
The size of a tsunamis depends on where you are when it arrives.
Aye, CO2 is a trace gas.
All those green things all over the plants that produce their own food by using the sun and CO2, emitting O2 as waste. It is believed that once upon a time, Earth’s atmosphere lacked oxygen; i.e. until those green things busily gobbled up the CO2, putting carbon into storage so to speak and emitting oxygen.
All so critters like you can evolve, mostly anyway.
As CO2 becomes less and less concentrated in the atmosphere; i.e. more of a ‘trace’ gas, plants begin to starve as they struggle to claim the few nearby molecules of CO2.
When one is down to 285 molecules per million and one adds just a tiny smidgeon that raises 285 to 400 ppm, that represents a forty percent increase of CO2 availability to plants.
Thousands of billions of plant cells work very hard to gather that CO2 in.
Now what’s your excuse?
PS One lousy meteorite is far far more dangerous than all of CAGW’s postulated and prophesied warming problems in a very cold world!!
WOW! Did you really write that? I guess I can ignore your statements now. Not even a good straw man. Just bad rhetoric.
[Mosher may have been being sarcastic. May have been invoking a rhetorical comment about Co2 and plants. His intent and his method is unclear. .mod]
Periodic mass extinction is nature`s way of simply starting over. Creation and destruction.
Nature`s purpose.
Mosh says:
C02 is trace gas how can more of a trace thing improve plant growth.
When you put a seed in a pot, the dirt isn’t what turns into a plant. It is the CO2 in the air. The dirt stays at the same level no matter how big the plant gets.
So it doesn’t matter if CO2 is a tiny trace gas. It is enough to build the plant, and all the organisms in the world’s oceans, and all the forests on earth. And all the animals, too — just one step removed. Carbon dioxide is every bit as essential to life on earth as H2O. But they can’t tax water nearly as easily as taxing “carbon” emissions.
Adding more CO2 just does not have the global warming effect claimed. If it did, global temperatures would truly be skyrocketing. But they aren’t. In fact, global warming has stopped, so the CO2/man-made global warming canard is falsified. The only warming that may be caused has already happened, when CO2 was under 100 ppm. But at current concentrations, CO2 just does not matter. At all. We don’t even have a measurement of AGW from CO2! CO2=AGW is still only a conjecture.
For years we have been commenting here that asteroids are the real threat. All it takes is one medium sized bolide to ruin your day. If NASA wanted to be useful, they would concentrate on the real threats, and forget about the CO2 false alarm.
Oh but “they” can tax water. Every household in Australia has a water meter, just like a power/gas meter. Even houses that collect water from rainfall are also issued water bills. I live in a block of 18 apartments, but there is just one water meter for the whole block. The property managers a while back posted letters to everyone to say that there is too much water consumption!
And for those countries that do not fit water meters to properties still issue rates bills that contain a water charge component, both supply and waste.
So, we are taxed for pretty much all consumption across the board, power, gas, fuel, food, the air (CO2 tax) and water.
All my water comes from rainfall, but I have never received a bill for it. Not sure what you mean by that.
What are the chances of a meteorite like the Russian one pictured below, grazing our thin smear of atmosphere, rather than smacking into the ground? It must be a remarkable shot to graze the planet, rather than hitting it, and I don’t recall too many direct hits lately.
I make it a 6,400 km radius vs 50 km of atmosphere, or about a 0.8% chance of hitting the atmosphere rather than the planet. (I think that’s right.)
There was another office-block sized grazer filmed in a US national park, way back in the 70s. It passed right through the atmosphere and went out the other side – without even saying ‘hello’. But this was pre-video and pre-internet, and I cannot find a pic or video of it. It is worth seeing again, if anyone can find it, it was a remarkable sight.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.1157849.1360927698!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_960/image.jpg
Ha – Big Jim Cooley has already found a Youtube video of it:
Here is another video of the 1972 meteor, which went 1,600 km from Utah to Alberta. The video does not start until 30 sec in. To be seen for 1,600 km the meteor must have traveled the entire tangental of the atmosphere – from 50 km up, down to almost ground level, and back up to 50 km up. I make this tangent exactly 1,600 km.
And this is about right, because in the video the meteor passes through a small cumulus cloud (especially on the replay at 48 seconds in), that looks less than 10,000 feet up (say 3 km up).
The Wiki page says the meteor passed within 50 km of the Earth. But at 49 secs on this clip, it is definitely pulling a tongue of vapour out of the cloud, just as an airliner would do. Although I do not notice a sonic boom on this clip, for some reason, as you would expect for a low-level supersonic pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Great_Daylight_Fireball
Anyway, it is a pretty good shot. You could not get closer.
.
The meteor does the same on this clip. Look at 5 sec in, and it passes straight through a cloud. But why no sonic boom?
But why no sonic boom?
There is no ‘first hand/original source’ sound track attached to either of these video clips. Whatever they were filming with either didn’t have audio sync track capability…. of they forgot to ‘turn it on’.
Great 8mm video clips, though!.
Mactheknife….
Yes, but a sonic boom would shake the camera, just like it did on many of the clips of the Russian meteor. Perhaps the cameraman was too far away for that, but it still looks fairly close to me.
R
The sonic boom would likely arrive later, as thunder does after a flash of lightning. In the Russian videos, people had gone outside to film the contrail the meteor left across the sky when the noise arrived and shook the cameras.
Let’s develop strong enough tethering materials to make the space elevator possible. It would be cool…
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
[Supplemental] data.
http://www.minorplanetcenter.org/iau/lists/Dangerous.html
So it looks like 2029 will be the closest encounter according to this data. Apophis distance .0002644
How off could this distance be either way? How close would this object have to come to earth to have some kind of an effect no matter how slight?
These things have to come really, really close to become a pain in the azz. Perhaps that is why the word asteroid is like hemorrhoid.
For the record, there are currently 1533 potentially hazardous near Earth Asteroids
There are currently 1533 known potentially hazardous Earth Asteroids…..
Every time we make the effort to look for them, we find more.
This is a serious issue to my mind. NEO’s are a threat we can combat if we put our mind and resources to it. Just think where we might be if even 25% of what has been spent on “Climate Change” and Green energy had instead been spent on detection, prediction, and defensive measures. Of course NEO’s are not the only threat. The real nightmare scenario for possible a possible devastating impact with Earth seems to be one in which a comet comes from behind the sun leaving little time for detection and reaction.
Re: Tabnumlock
Reference the Starfish Prime shot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime): 1.4 MT thermonuclear device detonated at 400 km altitude in 1962. Nothing easier to disregard than a treaty, especially when planetary survival is at issue.
But NASA would not be the outfit to get the job done. The national labs would have to design, develop, and test devices in space that probably would have to be at the 100 MT level (maybe on the far side of the Moon) and one or several of these would have to be tossed at the intruder by major booster rocket. The key phenomenon is the “x-ray slap” produced by the detonation, ablating the surface of the intruder under inertial confinement conditions that would create high surface pressure on the intruder, altering its speed or direction by impulse transfer. (This is not mumbo jumbo. I did this for a living.)
If you want to ponder the alternative, go to Winslow, AZ, and take a gander at the Barringer meteor crater: 1200 meters in diameter (3,900 ft). It is estimated to be the result of a 50-meter-diameter nickel-iron meteorite traveling at an impact velocity of 12.8 km/sec, producing a 10-MT event.
Here’s the problem: The weapons needed to deal with an astronomical intruder are beyond the pale in today’s international political climate, so we would have to Go It Alone with an administration that can smell the coffee. Gravity tugs, spiderwebs, and air fresheners are simply twaddle.
There is a UK project that has a similar mission (to identify threatening near Earth objects) but relies mainly on its own fundraising – the Spaceguard Centre ( http://spaceguardcentre.com/ ). It is well worth a visit if you are nearby (mid Wales near the England/Wales border).
You’d think NASA would be all over this in a big way. Link near-earth asteroids to global warming and hey presto you have the answer to the ‘major dangers’ of our planet (according to NASA).
NASA could send a satellite to direct a chosen asteroid heading in our direction – say just a 100m diameter asteroid that wouldn’t wipe us all out. Aim it at the south pole (or perhaps ISIS or Boko Haram), well inland so that tsunamis weren’t caused by it’s impact. The resulting cloud of ash, water, dust debris (shredded terrorists) etc would ‘dilute’ or completely shut out sunlight for several years, perhaps longer. This would send the world into a cold freeze of darkness an death, similar to what occurred during previous ice ages…. but it would completely halt the ‘dreaded’ global warming.
Who will be first to let Obama into this cunning plan?
Here is an idea. Why don’t we have an organisation to look out for extra terrestial objects that may impact Earth? You know an organisation that is look outwards and not inwards. We could call it something like the National Aeronautical and Space Administration … NASA for short. How about that for an idea. Also maybe they could work on how to deal with such an impact as, you know, a precautionary principle.
Just a thought …
Thanks, Eric.
There are also
NASA Asteroid and Comet Watch: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/main/
NEO Earth Close Approaches: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/
JPL NEAR-EARTH ASTEROID TRACKING: http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/
/SARC ON
The IPCC announced today that Asteroid impacts have reduced global temperatures, by seeding the atmosphere with heat reducing dust. However, they caution policy makers against complacency, “once we leave this dusty part of space, Global warming will accelerate again”, said a guy who models dusty space at NASA.
The Obama administration released its highest Terror alert to date this afternoon.
“We have credible evidence that ISIS, is attempting to secure a near earth asteroid, as a weapon of mass destruction. They intend to target a large City in the U.S.” said a white house spokesman,…er spokesperson, er,…spokesentity.
The liberal media have resoundingly endorsed the right of ISIS to obtain Asteroids, in retaliation for years of Western oppression. However, some in the liberal media are concerned, that once acquired, the Asteroid may be titled with a cisgendered, hetero-normative name. Some have gone as far as too resoundingly condemn ISIS for its lack of Transgender Jihadi’s.
Many Liberal media outlets are taking up the cause, by actively recruiting Transgendered Jihadi’s on behalf of ISIS.
/SARC OFF
Earth bonking space objects cannot generate revenue nor lead to leveraging more control over the population and so are of no interest to any grant-giving government agency nor is any university going to pinch off the money stream for equally useless but profitable work in climate alarmism. Best not even bring up the subject because people will think them useless in dealing with global problems. At the very least claim there is only a 38% probability one of these city destroyers will actually become a problem.
I used to know what I would do if the world was going to end in the next couple of hours but now I’m not so sure , age I guess.
A good post.
I think the concluding paragraph may be a bit alarmist, but dammit, if we aren’t ready when one comes, we ARE screwed. So serious attention needs to happen, if for no other reason than to identify that we are NOT at risk.
That would be nice.
I would like to invite everyone to drop in at http://www.cosmictusk.com (on Anthony’s SKEPTICAL VIEWS links) for info on this general topic.
Some here are skeptical of that entire line of reasoning. No problem with skeptics here, is there? Not there, either. Like here, the boys at CosmicTusk simply want us all to get it right. Part of the discussion at CosmicTusk is the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. But much of it isn’t.
Part of the discussion is about these NEOs and their very real threat – fully admitting that such a danger may be tens of thousands of years from now. But if we have the capacity to mitigate such a possible impact – for the first time in human history– and we don’t actually ready ourselves for it, we would have to pretty much deserve to get sent back to the stone age, wouldn’t we?
But why should ALL humans suffer because a few dudes that know better are dragging their feet?
BTW, NASA officials are on record denying that they even have jurisdiction for dangerous space objects. NOT a good attitude, IMHO.
Let’s see if attention here can bust some money loose and also boost these NEOs up the priority list.
Sorry — I just can’t get worked up over this one.
Why worry. Man-made global warming will have made the globe incandescent long before a meteor/comet strike!
Good. Thanks to Islam mankind is in need of an extinction level event. Time for some other species to have a shot at the title on this planet.
Not to worry!
Not that a little worry might be beneficial; but all of the sad excuses for scientists working in the CAGW scam are incapable of dealing with real emergencies.
Oh sure, they’re good a picturesque scenes and glib poppets of thoughts for the shallow devotees and mass media. But give them a genuine do or die problem and they’ll scatter.
When faced with desperate citizens, legislators get serious, deadly serious. As soon as the first mealy mouthed researcher gets in front and uses the words, ‘may, might, maybe, could, likely, possibly’ and similar; that same legislator who sucked up those very words while feeding on the gravy train, will cram those words back down the throat of the speaker.
By the third or fourth speaker there will be no more ‘voluntary’ researchers getting in front of the legislators to paint useless pictures of bad research.
Instead the legislators will have to go after them. Such a pretty thought, I’d almost welcome a genuine threat.
Then again, we have genuine threats, severe deadly threats facing civilization, (e.g. ISIS, malaria…). Yet the legislators aren’t facing those problems because they’re not getting their clothes torn during visits to their constituents. Which any wise legislator knows, means it time to suck in more of the existing gravy train before it is gone.