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...)
Asteroids
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...)
What Do They Know? The U.S. And Russia Have Both Been Developing Plans To Deal With Incoming Asteroids
When the Russians take decisive action, it is usually for a reason. As you will see below, the Russians have suddenly decided that now is the time to create an organization that will be tasked with detecting, tracking and potentially destroying incoming asteroids. Are they doing this now because they have finally decided that this is a good idea, or has something gotten their attention? Of course they are not likely to publicly admit if they have come to the conclusion that a gigantic space rock is heading directly toward us. Just like the U.S. government, the Russian government is very interested in maintaining social order, and so they would probably delay telling the public about a potential asteroid impact for as long as possible. (Read More...)
Earth Is Moving Toward The Same Meteor Swarm That Scientists Believe Caused The Tunguska Explosion Of 1908
Over the next several weeks, our planet will have a close encounter with the Taurid meteor swarm. It will be the closest that we have been to the center of the meteor swarm since 1975, and we won’t have an encounter this close again until 2032. So for astronomers, this is a really big deal. And hopefully there will be no danger to Earth during this pass, but some scientists are absolutely convinced that the Tunguska explosion of 1908 which flattened 80 million trees in Russia was caused by an object from the Taurid meteor swarm. As you will see below, the last week of June will mark the point when we are the closest to the center of the meteor swarm, and so that will be when the risk is the greatest. According to CBS News, our planet “will approach within 30,000,000 km of the center of the Taurid swarm” by the end of this month… (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?
Does 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...)