Dark Asteroids Found Lurking Near Earth
A near-Earth object becomes visible in infrared (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)
David Shiga writes on New Scientist:
An infrared space telescope has spotted several very dark asteroids that have been lurking unseen near Earth’s orbit. Their obscurity and tilted orbits have kept them hidden from surveys designed to detect things that might hit our planet.
Called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the new NASA telescope launched on 14 December on a mission to map the entire sky at infrared wavelengths. It began its survey in mid-January.
In its first six weeks of observations, it has discovered 16 previously unknown asteroids with orbits close to Earth’s. Of these, 55 per cent reflect less than one-tenth of the sunlight that falls on them, which makes them difficult to spot with visible-light telescopes. One of these objects is as dark…
‘Object X’ Likely Related to Prehistoric Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid
David Perlman writes in the SF Chronicle:
A puzzling object that seemed to be a comet flying inside the solar system’s asteroid belt is no comet at all, but the remains of a violent collision between two fossil rocks that populate the belt, astronomers say.
Captured in images by the Hubble Space Telescope, the crash of the asteroids provides scientists with their first opportunity to see clear evidence of the violent activity that has constantly churned the asteroid belt since its formation, probably when the planets themselves were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.
The object was first sighted in early January by astronomers at the Air Force LINEAR project telescope in New Mexico, who reported it as a comet that must have flown into the asteroid belt from the solar system’s outer…
Hubble Detects Mysterious Spaceship-Shaped Object Traveling at 11,000 MPH
Jesus Diaz writes a very thought-provoking article on Gizmodo:
Hubble has discovered a mysterious X-shaped object traveling at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids. Or a Klingon Bird of Prey. Either way, UCLA investigator David Jewitt is excited:
This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets. The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.
OK, David, we will believe you until Jerry Bruckheimer finish his next movie, in which a “comet” suddenly stops, turns to Earth, and starts firing anti-matter rays…
Russia’s Armageddon Plan to Save Earth from Asteroid Collision
More interesting news from Russia to set your mind at ease. Via the Guardian:
Space scientists in Russia are preparing to boldly go where no man has gone before, except for the actor Bruce Willis.
The head of the Russian space agency said today that it was considering a Hollywood-style mission to send a spacecraft to bump a large asteroid from a possible collision course with Earth.
Anatoly Perminov told the Russian radio station Golos Rossii: “People’s lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people.”
The mission would be aimed at an asteroid called Apophis, he said, which is expected to pass close…
Are Earth’s Oceans Made Of Extraterrestrial Material?
From Science Daily:
Contrary to preconceived notions, the atmosphere and the oceans were perhaps not formed from vapors emitted during intense volcanism at the dawning of our planet. Francis Albarède of the Laboratoire des Sciences de la Terre (CNRS / ENS Lyon / Université Claude Bernard) suggests that water was not part of the Earth’s initial inventory but stems from the turbulence caused in the outer Solar System by giant planets. Ice-covered asteroids thus reached the Earth around one hundred million years after the birth of the planets.
The Earth’s water could therefore be extraterrestrial, have arrived late in its accretion history, and its presence could have facilitated plate tectonics even before life appeared. The conclusions of the study carried out by Albarède feature in an article published on the 29 October…
Asteroid Passes Just 8,700 Miles From Earth – With Only 15 hours Warning
The Daily Mail is reporting on a close shave for all of us here on Earth, scarily close to the opening of Roland Emmerich’s mega-disaster movie 2012. A massive impact on the Earth’s surface by a Near Earth Object (NEO) (albeit one bigger than this asteroid) could bring about the types of disasters that 2012 alarmists are warning of. Alexandra Bruce describes the likelihood of NEO impact on Earth in 2012 in her book, 2012: Science or Superstition; the scariest part is that scientists generally only know about NEOs buzzing Earth after the fact.
Although no one noticed at the time, the Earth was almost hit by an asteroid last Friday.
The previously undiscovered asteroid came within 8,700miles of Earth but astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before it made its closest approach.
Its orbit…
Scientists Close In On Mystery Of Arctic Asteroid Strikes
Alexis Madrigal reports in Wired:
Two polar scientists hot on the trail of an arctic mystery have a new tool for exploration: a hovercraft, specially outfitted for week-long trips over the ice with scientific instruments and solar panels.
Their quarry is a nearly 22,000 square-mile patch of disturbed Arctic sea floor that could be evidence of a massive asteroid strike. John Hall, a now-retired geoscientist, discovered the anomaly during his late-’60s graduate work aboard Fletcher’s Ice Island, a huge berg U.S. scientists inhabited for several decades.
Since then, no scientific vessel has been back over the area to collect more data. The massive icebreakers that have crunched through the Arctic since the 1990s can’t reach the spot, said Yngve Kristofferson, a scientist and explorer at the University of Bergen in Norway.
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