Asteroid

A “Mega-Comet” That Is At Least 62 Miles Wide Has Entered Our Solar System

Did you know that an absolutely gigantic comet that is at least 62 miles wide is cruising through our solar system right now?  Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is already closer to the sun than Neptune, but scientists are assuring us that it is absolutely no threat to our planet.  If that is true, that is great news, because it appears that this is the biggest comet ever discovered.  It is being projected that it will make its closest approach to the sun in January 2031, and after that it is expected to head on a path that will eventually take it out of our solar system.  Let us hope that all of this information is accurate, but could there be a possibility that the scientists that have studied this giant space rock are wrong? (Read More...)

Why Are So Many Asteroids Having Close Calls With Earth In 2020?

Have you noticed that it seems like stories about asteroids that are approaching the Earth are constantly in the news this year?  It wasn’t always this way.  In the old days, maybe there would be a story about an asteroid every once in a while, and those stories were never a big deal.  But now asteroids are zipping by our planet with frightening regularity, and several more very notable passes will happen over the next few weeks.  For example, an asteroid that was just discovered on September 18th will come very, very close to the Earth on Thursday.  According to NASA, it will actually come closer to our planet than many of our weather satellites… (Read More...)

If NASA Couldn’t See The Asteroid That Just Whizzed By Us, What Else Can’t They See?

Did you know that an asteroid just flew by our planet at an extremely close distance?  The good news is that it was only about the size of a car, but the bad news is that NASA had absolutely no idea that it was coming.  In fact, NASA only discovered it about six hours after it had passed us.  If NASA could not see that asteroid coming straight at us, what else is heading toward us that they cannot see? It has been estimated that “about 17,000 big near-Earth asteroids remain undetected”, but the truth is that we don’t really know how many giant space rocks are floating around out there.  Of course scientists all around the world are doing their best to catalog new potential threats all the time, but what most people don’t realize is that this is an area where our technology is still very limited. (Read More...)

Scientists Have Warned That A 400 Foot Tsunami Could Hit The East Coast If An Asteroid Hit The Atlantic Ocean

We live at a time when giant space rocks are whizzing past our planet with alarming regularity.  Sometimes we know in advance that they are coming, and sometimes we don’t.  In fact, on July 28th an asteroid the size of a car zipped past our planet “at a range that rivals the orbits of some high-flying satellites”, but we had only spotted it for the very first time on July 26th.  If we couldn’t see that one until it was nearly upon us, could it be possible that there are much larger potential threats hurtling toward our planet that we currently know nothing about? (Read More...)

Is An Asteroid Coming? The Proposed Budget For NASA’s ‘Planetary Defense Coordination Office’ Is Suddenly Increased To $150 Million

It didn’t make many national headlines, but the proposed budget for NASA’s “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” was just increased by 90 million dollars.  At a time when our national budget is already stretched to the max, this seems like an odd thing to be spending so much money on.  As you will see below, the “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” is only two years old, and it is in charge of tracking threats posed by near-Earth objects such as asteroids.  Needless to say, if a giant asteroid suddenly hit our planet it would be the greatest catastrophe in modern times and for those of us that survived our lives would be radically different from then on.  So the threat is real, but in recent years NASA has assured the public that there are no imminent threats.  Has that now changed? (Read More...)

Why Has The White House Suddenly Released A Strategy For Dealing With The Threat Of A Catastrophic Meteor Impact?

Meteor Impact - Public DomainDoes the White House know something that the rest of us do not? As the Obama administration draws to a close, the White House has suddenly released a major document that details a multi-pronged strategy for dealing with the threat of a catastrophic meteor impact. Most of us remember movies such as “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” that attempted to depict what such a crisis would look like, but up until fairly recently the U.S. government has never seemed to take this kind of threat very seriously. (Read More...)

100 Foot Asteroid Could Pass Earth 20 Times Closer Than The Moon At 34,000 MPH On March 7th

Meteor Impact - Public DomainDid you know that a huge asteroid is scheduled to make a “close shave” with our planet on March 7th?  This asteroid is known as “2013 TX68”, and it is estimated to be anywhere from 80 to 170 feet in length.  Most news reports are saying that it is 100 feet long.  Scientists are telling us that they are not certain exactly how close this giant space rock will come, and that is rather unsettling.  They say that it could come within roughly 1/20th the distance from the Earth to the moon, or that it could pass by millions of miles away.  Because the orbit of this huge asteroid is unpredictable, they tell us that they don’t really know what will happen, but they insist that it will not hit us.  If it does pass us at 1/20th the distance from the Earth to the moon, that would be about half as far up as many of our communications satellites.  That would be incredibly close, and many are wondering what may happen if our scientists are just slightly off in their calculations. (Read More...)

NASA Creates A ‘Planetary Defense Coordination Office’ That Will Track Meteors Headed Toward Earth

Meteor Striking - Public DomainWhy is NASA suddenly so concerned about meteors and asteroids hitting the Earth? After telling us that “no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years” last year, NASA is now spending millions of dollars to set up a “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” that will be headed up by a designated “Planetary Defense Officer”. According to NASA, more than 13,500 near Earth objects have been found so far, and another 1,500 new NEOs are being discovered each year. Approximately 10 percent of all near Earth objects are one kilometer or larger in size, and if one of those giant space rocks ever hit us, it would likely be considered an “extinction level event”. It makes sense that NASA would be concerned about this threat, but why now? (Read More...)