February 15, 2013

Who Says There's No Good News?: "The likelihood in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima A-bomb: 30%."

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Whew. What a relief!......

Wait..... wait..... Oh Damn!

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Sigh. Keep comin' back. We're sure to get a winner one of these days.....

Like... maybe.... tomorrow?

About 1,100 injured as meteorite hits Russia with force of atomic bomb | Fox News

A problem that is bigger than global warming | Watts Up With That?

Asteroid 2012 DA14 makes its closest approach at 2:24 p.m. EST/1924 GMT today. .... The likelihood in this century of an asteroid impact with 700 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima A-bomb: 30%.... While politicians, their activist friends, and pundits caterwaul over a few tenths of a degree change in the global temperature over the last 100 years, with some Ehrlich-like nutballs even claiming it will cause extinction of humanity, today might be a good day to recognize a real extinction level challenge humanity faces. One wonders if yesterday’s meteor in Russia wasn’t some parts of the asteroid fragmented in a deep space collision eons ago and in a similar trajectory hours ahead. It may also be simply coincidence.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at February 15, 2013 1:53 PM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

There isn't any connection between the asteroid and the meteorite. The meteorite was travelling - roughly - north to south and the asteroid was traveling (is travelling?) roughly south to north. They cannot have ever been parts of the same object in space. How do I know this? It's part of "white privilege": I was instructed on arcane knowledge forbidden to people of color, in this case, celestial mechanics. Besides, both the U.K. Space Agency and NASA announced that earlier, this morning, about 10:30 CST.

Posted by: Ike at February 15, 2013 2:10 PM

Credible people write that the two pieces could in fact be from the same source even with the collision bound object hitting from an opposite angle. What's credible about NASA anymore?

Posted by: james wilson at February 15, 2013 6:26 PM

Just another reminder of the awesome power inherent in nature. Even if we had seen the meteor coming, there's nothing that could have been done about it, and if it had actually exploded over (or landed in) Chelyabinsk instead of in the mountains, the loss of life would have been horrific. If one of these is headed your way at 33,000 mph, it doesn't really matter where it comes from.

Posted by: waltj at February 15, 2013 9:56 PM

The MSM gave 33,000, 46,000 and 330,000 as the speed of the object, depending on which babbling head pronounced it as gospel.

My only regret with the objects passage is, the damn thing isn't steerable. Having that land in or in close proximity to Wash. DC would have elevated the occurrence to more air time than Sandy Hook and Storm Sandy combined.

It would have eliminated more dinosaurs and cleaned up a massive source of pollution.

Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck at February 16, 2013 4:44 AM

There are millions of radars and telescopes watching the skies all over the planet, and no one saw this coming?

Posted by: mjazzguitar at February 16, 2013 5:48 AM

When you consider that orbital velocity is 17,500 mph, and escape velocity is 25,000 mph, and both have been achieved by man-made rockets, 33,000 mph is likely a realistic estimate of the meteor's speed. The videos showed it going horizon to horizon at an extremely high rate of speed. Don't know if 46,000 mph is also in the ballpark, but 330,000 mph is way high.

Posted by: waltj at February 16, 2013 9:07 AM