Tunguska-sized space rock buzzes Earth.

[Bill Cravener]

Wow!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16697-tunguskasized-space-rock-buzzes-earth.html

[dedndave]

Yikes!
i suspect where there is one, there is more
i may not hafta debug that program, after all

[hutch--]

Good link Bill, 19 kilometres across is a mighty big rock. I wonder how the NASA guy works out it would break up in the atmosphere if it was on a collision course with earth ?

I got sidetracked on the site with the Mars photos from the two tiny crafts they have there at the moment. I had a copy of the martian sunset in largeresolution some time ago so I made a screen background out of it, looks like something out of this world.  :bg

[Bill Cravener]

Hi Steve, that is a great website if you enjoy science as I do. There is no doubt in my mind that one day we will get hit hard, just hope its after I've passed away from natural causes.  :bg

[dedndave]

there is probably some type of "karma law of the universe" that says we have it coming
i always look at the surface of the moon and it makes me wonder two things;

1) some of the craters on the moon seem large enough - all these big rocks can't be burnt up before hitting the earth
    especially if you consider how fast they are traveling, relative to the earth
    it seems logical that, at some speed, some part of the rock makes it to earth
    i understand about friction in the atmosphere, but a rock can only disintegrate so fast, too
2) when was the last time you heard about a large one hitting the moon?
    that would seem newsworthy to me, as it would change the face and, thus, the map of the moon
    it seems that most of that activity abated earlier in the history of our solar system
    perhaps many of the craters we see on our moon, as well as moons of other planets
    happened, well, not all at once, but in realtively few bursts
    maybe a nearby solar systems go nova and we catch the debris
    so - let's be watching nearby suns very closely - lol
    sceintists seem to predict with a great degree of accuracy when a star is going to nova
    the question is, what is the closest star that will go nova in, say, the next 100 years?

from distant novas that release all this debris, it is simply a roll of the dice
fortunately, we present a relatively small profile on the vastness of space, which helps our odds
also, i suspect much of this debris gets collected by black holes
but - if you keep rolling the dice long enough - eventually you are going to hit snake-eyes
i guess if we were really an advanced race, we'd be looking for a back-up plan
to get our species started elsewhere instead of trying to learn about mars

[FORTRANS]

it seems logical that, at some speed, some part of the rock makes it to earth

Hi,

You mean something like...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070623.html

Steve N.

[mitchi]

One of these asteroids could kill us all. I wonder if nukes would be effective at destroying these rocks.

[dedndave]

Fortrans - lol - yah - i live in Arizona - didn't know that was it's name and i have been there - lol

Mitchi - i am not going to spoil the ending for you
         you'll just have to watch the movie
(Liv Tyler - woo hoo)

[mitchi]

What kind of movie was it ? I saw Armageddon but they didn't use nuclear missiles.
But if there's Lyv Tyler in it...  :bg

[dedndave]

well - they used a nuclear bomb
if you were watching the movie instead of Liv Tyler, you'd know they had to bury it and a missile wasn't good enough - lol

[Mark Jones]

Rather than "blow it up," the more realistic solution, provided it were detected early enough, is to detonate some nukes near it, to force it off-course.

[FORTRANS]

maybe a nearby solar systems go nova and we catch the debris
    so - let's be watching nearby suns very closely - lol
    sceintists seem to predict with a great degree of accuracy when a star is going to nova
    the question is, what is the closest star that will go nova in, say, the next 100 years?

   Well a nova is a white dwarf in a binary system.  The two closest white
dwarfs are in Sirius and Procyon, though I don't recall anyone claiming
they will go nova any time soon.

   A supernova is the death of a very large star, or a white dwarf (type 1a).
The two mentioned most often are Eta Carina and Betelgeuse.  Not very
close by.

Regards,

Steve N.

[dedndave]

actually - none of them are - lol
if the nearest star went - it would be thousands or millions of years before the debris got here
i am just tryin to scare everyone
also - the mass that would come our way is proportional to (star mass/dist^2) - it diminishes rather quickly

[rags]

the meteor that made the 1 mile wide crater in Arizona wasn't really that large, only estimated to be 130 feet across but had a mass of 300,000 tons. I can't begin to imagine the havoc that would result from an impact with a much larger object.

[dedndave]

(hmmmmm - sounds like the first wife - i sure miss good ole "wide'n heavy")
it was probably hurling along at 25,000 miles per second, too - lol
if you were standing where it landed, you didn't feel a thing