Photo: Science/AAAS

Allison McCann reports for Popular Mechanics on the visual trail of a comet as it approached the sun, vaporized, and finally disintegrated:

Sun-grazing comets are frustratingly elusive. As they approach the intense heat of the sun, these dirty snowballs turn to gas in a hurry and put on an impressive show before they disappear. But the intense solar radiation also makes the comet’s death extremely difficult to detect.

On July 6, 2011, solar physicist C.J. Schrijver of the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center and colleagues became the first to directly witness a comet falling within the solar corona, a sort of blazing-hot atmosphere that surrounds the sun. Labeled C/2011 N3 (SOHO), the comet is from the Kreutz family, the source of about 80 percent of the comets that pass so close to our star. The comet, moving at roughly 1.3 million miles per hour, was only visible to scientists for 20 minutes before vaporizing.

Schrijver and his colleagues describe their observations of the destructing comet in a study released in Science this week. A series of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images captured by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite enabled researchers to document the comet’s death plunge into the sun…

[continues at Popular Mechanics]

We have a visitor — a large asteroid called 2005 YU55 that is expected to come within approximately 201,700 miles of Earth on Tuesday, according to NASA. That’s slightly less than the distance from Earth to the moon.

Asteroids often pass this close, but most are tiny. Countless thousands of pieces come plunging into the atmosphere, but they burn up without doing any harm. If they’re as large as grains of sand, we may, if we’re lucky, see them in the night sky as shooting stars.

But 2005 YU55 is at least 1,300 feet wide — larger than an aircraft carrier, according to radar measurements. The last time an asteroid this big passed by was in 1976, and the next one scientists know of won’t be until 2028, NASA says. (There have been some rude surprises in between, but not involving anything remotely as large.)
Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., said this fly-by is an opportunity to learn more about c-type — that is, carbon-based — asteroids, to find “clues as to what it was like when our solar system was forming.”

More: ABC News

The Willamette Meteorite, the largest ever to be found in the United States.

The New York Times reports:

Ebay and other Web sites pulse with hundreds of sales pitches. “The pieces below have an exceptional patina,” a site called Star-bits.com said of 10 pictured fragments.

The ads are for chunks of meteorites, bits of asteroids that have fallen from the sky and are as prized by scientists as they are by collectors. As more meteorites have been discovered in recent years, interest in them has flourished and an illegal sales market has boomed — much to the dismay of the people who want to study them and the countries that consider them national treasures.

“It’s a black market,” said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist at Case Western Reserve University who directs the federal search for meteorites in Antarctica. “It’s as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal.”

The discovery of a rich and historically significant meteorite crater in southern Egypt, just north of the Sudanese border, has shown the voracious appetite for new fragments. Just as scientists appeared to be on the cusp of decrypting the evidence to solve an ancient puzzle, looters plundered the desolate site, and the political chaos in Egypt seems to ensure that the scientists will not be going back anytime soon.

The mystery began thousands of years ago with Egyptian hieroglyphs, which refer to the “iron of heaven.” Archaeologists have long debated whether the Egyptians made artifacts from iron meteorites that fell to Earth in fiery upheavals. The main evidence came from ancient knife blades of iron that had high concentrations of nickel — a rare element in the Earth’s crust that was considered a signature of extraterrestrial origin…

For more information, see original article.

A grim top-secret report prepared by Moscow’s Institute of Physics of the Earth for Prime Minister Putin on the catastrophic 9.0 magnitude Sendai Megaquake and Tsunami that hit Japan on March 11th is now warning that the “balance of our planet” has been altered after the titanic forces underlying this disaster has moved the Japanese Islands at least 13-feet closer to the North American West Coast Region and shortened the day by a couple of millionths of a second and tilted the Earth’s axis slightly.

According to this report, the Sendai Megaquake disaster is the “third part” of a major “four part” realignment of the entire “Ring of Fire” Pacific Plate that began with the 8.8 magnitude Megaquake that hit Chile on February 27, 2010, continued on with the 6.3 magnitude quake that destroyed New Zealand’s second most populous city Christchurch on February 22, 2011, and this past week caused the 9.0 magnitude Megaquake that has left Japan reeling.

At 103 million square kilometers (64 million square miles), this report continues, the Pacific Plate is our World’s largest tectonic plate and the forces now being exerted by it on the Juan de Fuca Plate (located to the west of the North American Plate) due to the previous three disaster of Chile, New Zealand and Japan has brought what is called the Cascadia Subduction Zone to near “total failure” threatening the coastlines of Alaska, Western Canada and the Northwest region of the United States with catastrophic Megaquakes and tsunamis.

As we had reported in our March 9, 2011 report “March Mega Quake Warning Issued For United States”, Russian scientists disagree with their Western counterparts as to the reasons underlying the catastrophic changes our Earth is now going through and continue to monitor the subtle electromagnetic signals that are being detected in our Earth’s upper atmosphere over many regions of the World and the mass animal deaths associated with the violent changing of our Planet’s magnetic field, and which this report further warns is “increasing by the hour” over the Juan de Fuca Plate.

Most astounding in all of these events are the masses of the peoples affected by these catastrophes still ignoring the shocking rise of the Sun over Arctic Greenland two days early this past January that set off a series of Superstorms that have virtually destroyed our World’s ability to feed itself.

Perhaps even worse than the catastrophes that have already shaken our entire Planet is what is soon to come, and as we had, also, previously warned about in our March 1st report “Russian Warning Issued Over “Controlled” Comet Headed Towards Earth”, which aside from detailing how all the major powers are preparing vast underground bunkers, points to a melding of our Earth’s most ancient myths to modern day realities…

[continues in the European Union Times]

At about 3am on 8 October last year, an asteroid the size of a small house smashed into the Earth’s atmosphere over an isolated part of Indonesia. The asteroid disintegrated in the atmosphere causing a 50 kiloton explosion, about four times the size of the atomic bomb used to destroy Hiroshima. The blast was picked up by several infrasound stations used by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization to monitor nuclear tests.

No-one was injured in blast but the incident highlights the threat that planet faces from near Earth asteroids. Astronomers expect a strike like this once every 2-12 years. And the US congress has given NASA the task of sweeping the skies to identify anything heading our way. So far NASA has looked for objects of a kilometre or more in size and determined that none of these is on track to hit Earth in the foreseeable future.

But what of smaller objects? Various estimates show that an impact with an asteroid just 50 metres across would cause some 30,000 deaths (compared with 50 million deaths from an impact with a 1 kilometre-sized object).

This raises two important questions. The first is how best can astronomers monitor the skies for these smaller objects. The second is what to do should we find something heading our way.

Today, John Tonry from the University of Hawaii gives us his view. He believes the goal of finding 90 per cent of city-destroying asteroids in time to deflect them is extremely challenging. He says a more realistic target is to evacuate the area under threat. And for that we’ll need just three week’s notice.

Given these constraints, he reckons he can do the job with an array of eight 25cm aperture telescopes with a wide field of view that simultaneously scan the visible sky twice a night. He calls this early warning system the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System or ATLAS…

[continues at Technology Review]

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the aftermath of just what happens when two asteroids collide at 11,000 mph (17,702 km/h), prompting an explosion “as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb”.

P/2010 A2. Photo: NASA

The result is a “peculiar” object – dubbed P/2010 A2 – which boasts a comet-like debris trail behind a mysterious X-shaped formation.

The asteroid belt pile-up happened in early 2009, according to NASA, but it wasn’t until January this year that the Lincoln Near-Earth Research (LINEAR) Program Sky Survey spotted the tail.

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 observations indicate a surviving 400-foot-wide (122m-wide) object, which was hit by a smaller body, “perhaps 10 to 15 feet wide” (3 to 4m). The latter was vapourised in the blast, and its remains and material thrown off from the former were swept into a tail by solar radiation.

Astronomers are keen to find out just how much dust such high-speed encounters eject into interplanetary space, and while they reckon that “modest-sized asteroids smash into each other about once a year”, they’re difficult to spot…

[continues in the Register]

NASA/JPL plot of asteroids' paths

These ones probably won’t hit, but they show that so-called Near Earth Objects could collide with our planet at any time with precious little warning. From ABC News:

Today is not a good day for the anxious among us. Two small asteroids — two in twelve hours — are passing the earth, both coming within the moon’s orbit, one of them whipping by about 49,000 miles away.

In a spirit of calm, we ought to point out that NASA says close calls like these happen, on average, almost daily. The difference is that usually we never know. These two objects were both spotted Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona.

The specifics:

–Asteroid 2010 RX30 is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet in size (10-20 meters) and passed within 154,000 miles of Earth at 5:51 a.m. EDT this morning. (The moon, by comparison, is 2,200 miles in diameter and respectfully stays about 240,000 miles away.)

–Asteroid 2010 RF12, about 20-45 feet in maximum width (6-14 meters), is passing within approximately 49,088 miles of us at 5:12 p.m. EDT. That’s a fifth as far away as the moon.

A decade ago, this was the stuff of movies — think “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” — but one of the more memorable lines from back then was that the planet would be whacked by something “the size of Texas.” Asteroids the size of today’s passersby enter the earth’s atmosphere about once a decade, mostly harmlessly.

Of course, every now and then — remember the theory about the death of the dinosaurs — something hits us that is not harmless…

[continues at ABC News]

This isn’t an urgent call to arms, but it’s certainly a future date to consider. In the year 2182 — 172 years time — there’s the possibility that we might be hit by an asteroid with potential to cause some significant global turmoil.

This long-distance forecast could help mankind determine whether asteroid deflection techniques are warranted, especially when given nearly two centuries of lead time.

The not-so-romantically named (101955) 1999 RQ36 — discovered in 1999 — measures approximately 510 meters in diameter and is classified as an Apollo asteroid. Apollo asteroids pose a threat to our planet as they routinely cross Earth’s orbit.

With a one-in-a-thousand chance of 1999 RQ36 hitting Earth — with half of this probability indicating a 2182 impact — the threat might not sound too acute.

But compare this with the panic that ensued with the discovery of 99942 Apophis in 2004. Initially, it was thought there was a 1-in-233 chance of Apophis hitting us in 2029. This estimate was alarming; it was the first time an asteroid had been promoted to “Level 4″ on the Torino Scale — a near-Earth object (NEO) impact hazard categorization method.

Read More: Discovery News

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 as fresh asphalt, reflecting less than 5 per cent of the light it receives.

Many of these dark asteroids have orbits that are steeply tilted relative to the plane in which all the planets and most asteroids orbit. This means telescopes surveying for asteroids may be missing many other objects with tilted orbits, because they spend most of their time looking in this plane.

Read More: New Scientist

An asteroid 30 to 50 feet across will pass by the Earth at just more than one-third the distance between the Earth and the moon on Wednesday. That’s the closest near-Earth object approach currently known between now and the flyby in 2024 of a similar-size object known as 2007 XB23.

The new asteroid, called 2010 AL30, was discovered by the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program, and announced Monday by the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

The short amount of time between the spotting of the object and its near intersection with Earth is a good reminder that humans don’t know every object that could come hurtling out of space and collide with our planet.

“Visitors frequently ask me if I worry about the NEOs that I measure,” wrote Dr. P. Clay Sherrod of the Arkansas Sky Observatories, on a forum thread discussing the asteroid. “My response: ‘I don’t worry about those that we keep up with…. I am more concerned about the ones we never see coming.”

To see how close the asteroid will get, check out this animation of the asteroid’s Earth approach (.avi) by Gerhard Dangl, an Austrian astronomer…

[continues in Wired News]

Russia’s space chief said Wednesday his agency will consider sending a spacecraft to a large asteroid to knock it off its path and prevent a possible collision with Earth.

Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis, telling Golos Rossii radio that it would invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project once it is finalized.

When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37.

Further studies ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) above Earth’s surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.

In October, NASA lowered the odds that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 from a 1-in-45,000 as earlier thought to a 1-in-250,000 chance after researchers recalculated the asteroid’s path. It said another close encounter in 2068 will involve a 1-in-330,000 chance of impact…

[continues at Yahoo News/AP]

We’ve been told since childhood that an asteroid extinguished the mighty dinosaurs in a single day. When we look out at our pockmarked celestial neighbors, we know that something similar could happen here again. Recent discoveries at the bottom of the seas seem to bear this out and the “Planet X” rumors probably stem from these new scientific observations. “In 1980, only 86 Near Earth Asteroids and comets were known to exist…[today] NASA estimates that there are perhaps 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets in the general vicinity of Earth.” So far, the technology to adequately view and track these potential threats simply didn’t exist. With the November 2009 launch of NASA’s “WISE”: Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, it is hoped that we’ll be able to see any hazards that we’ve missed.

NASA was a little late, but on December 14, 2009 at 14:09 GMT WISE was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The rocket deposited WISE into a polar orbit 326 miles above Earth.

In a cheap but cute video, NASA scientist Dr. Amy Mainzer describes how the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) will provide a map to the universe’s hidden treasures, not to mention warning us of impending impact with Near Earth Objects:

[cross posted from 2012SOS.com]

One of the best annual meteor showers will peak in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, and for some skywatchers the show could be quite impressive.

The best seats are in Asia, but North American observers should be treated to an above average performance of the Leonid meteor shower, weather permitting. The trick for all observers is to head outside in the wee hours of the morning – between 1 a.m. and dawn – regardless where you live.

The Leonids put on a solid show every year, if skies are clear and moonlight does not interfere. This year the moon is near its new phase, and not a factor. For anyone in the Northern Hemisphere with dark skies, away from urban and suburban lighting, the show should be worth getting up early to see.

“We’re predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia,” said Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. Other astronomers who work in the nascent field of meteor shower prediction have put out similar forecasts.

Urban dwellers and suburbanites will see far fewer, as the fainter meteors will be drowned out by local lights…

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 brought it 30 times nearer than the Moon, which is 250,000 miles away.

But before you head for the nuclear bunkers you will be relieved to learn the tumbling rock was only 23ft across. Similar sized objects pass by this close to Earth about twice a year and impact on the planet about once every five years.

Astronomers believe the object, called 2009 VA, would have almost completely burned up while entering Earth’s atmosphere, causing a brilliant fireball in the sky but no major damage to the surface.

The asteroid was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on November 6, 2009. It was then identified by the Minor Planet Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a near Earth object.

Nasa’s Near Earth Object Programme plotted the orbit of the object and determined that although it would fly extremely close to our planet it wouldn’t hit us.

It was the third-closest known (non-impacting) Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid.

[continues in the Daily Mail]

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/asteroid-passes-just-8700-miles-from-earth-with-only-15-hours-warning/feed/ 6 http://www.disinfo.com/2009/10/a-new-end-of-the-world-date-not-2012-not-2036-now-its-2068/ http://www.disinfo.com/2009/10/a-new-end-of-the-world-date-not-2012-not-2036-now-its-2068/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:48:28 +0000 majestic http://www.disinfo.com/?p=12537 Rachel Courtland writes in New Scientist that the asteroid Apophis, previously thought to be on course for impact with Earth in 2036, is now more likely to hit us in 2068. (As an aside, Alexandra Bruce writes about Apophis and other Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that we may like to worry about in the disinformation book 2012: Science or Superstition.) From New Scientist:

The chances of the asteroid Apophis hitting Earth in 2036 are lower than we thought. But those worried about deep impacts should add a new entry to their calendar: 2068.

When Apophis was first spotted in 2004, the 250-metre-wide rock was briefly estimated to have a 2.7 per cent chance of hitting Earth in 2029. Further observations quickly showed that it will miss Earth that year – but should it pass through a 600-metre-wide “keyhole” in space, it will return to hit Earth in 2036.

For the past several years, the…

]]> Rachel Courtland writes in New Scientist that the asteroid Apophis, previously thought to be on course for impact with Earth in 2036, is now more likely to hit us in 2068. (As an aside, Alexandra Bruce writes about Apophis and other Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that we may like to worry about in the disinformation book 2012: Science or Superstition.) From New Scientist:

The chances of the asteroid Apophis hitting Earth in 2036 are lower than we thought. But those worried about deep impacts should add a new entry to their calendar: 2068.

When Apophis was first spotted in 2004, the 250-metre-wide rock was briefly estimated to have a 2.7 per cent chance of hitting Earth in 2029. Further observations quickly showed that it will miss Earth that year – but should it pass through a 600-metre-wide “keyhole” in space, it will return to hit Earth in 2036.

For the past several years, the probability of such a collision has been considered to be 1 in 45,000. But new calculations suggest the chance of an impact in 2036 is far lower – about 1 in 250,000.

The revised estimate is in part a result of additional observations of the asteroid as well as refinements on the position of Apophis in older data…

]]> http://www.disinfo.com/2009/10/a-new-end-of-the-world-date-not-2012-not-2036-now-its-2068/feed/ 35