time travel, parallel universes, and other useful illusions
“SMALL ASTEROID TO IMPACT OVER NEW YORK CITY’S CENTRAL PARK IN 10 DAYS” So reads the fake press release for day five of the fictional impact event at this year’s Planetary Defense Conference.
There are many ways to stop an asteroid. You could attach rockets to one, steering it away from Earth. You could shoot one, knocking it off course. You could even capture one inside an inflatable bag, redirecting it elsewhere. Seriously. And then there’s the old Armageddon standby: Nuke the asteroid to all hell.
On February 15, 2013, Asteroid 2012 DA14 will glide past Earth, coming within 27,700 km (or 17,200 miles), closer than our orbiting geosynchronous satellite ring. As you can see in the above animation created by NASA, this will definitely be a close encounter.
Well, there goes 2012. It was an interesting year, sure. But past is past, and now it’s time to wonder what 2013 will bring us.
Everything seems so peaceful when you look up at the stars. It’s all so quiet. Motionless. Eternal. But that’s only because your eyes can’t see the 4,700 asteroids that might want you, and everything else on Earth, dead. New data from NASA’s NEOWISE project (that’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) has confirmed the existence …
Continue reading “NASA Confirms Existence Of 4,700 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids”
As I type this, the 21-mile-long asteroid 433 Eros is blissfully skating by Earth. On January 31, just last week, it was only about 15 million miles away. That’s the closest it’s come since 1975. It’ll stick around until Valentine’s Day, after which it will dim from view, but now’s your chance to get a …
Asteroid 2012 BX34 came within about 37,000 miles of Earth on Friday, January 27. That’s about 1/6 the distance from here to the moon. It was just a close-shave, and fairly small. Not very dangerous as far as asteroids go. But the experience has sparked interest in an international collaboration to prepare us for when a larger asteroid …