MetaFilter posts tagged with asteroid

Asteroid 1998 QE2 is coming!

Westringia F. — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:05:21 -0800

Watch Near Earth Asteroid 1998 QE2 live as it makes its closest approach to Earth. Basically NOW. Also, it has its own moon!

A brilliant plan.

MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:22:50 -0800

There is no way this could possibly go wrong.

Is artificial intelligence more a threat to humanity than an asteroid?

homunculus — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:22:38 -0800

Omens: When we peer into the fog of the deep future what do we see – human extinction or a future among the stars? [Via]

You're all gonna die! / The world's gonna end!

Rory Marinich — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 08:30:38 -0800

From the guy who brought you Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf and Christian Bale is at Your Party comes a new musical:

In every disaster movie, some guy bursts into the Oval Office and says, "Mr. President! There's an asteroid headed directly for the earth!" This is that guy's story. [password: calvert]

An Adventure 65 Million Dominoes In The Making

brundlefly — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 16:36:14 -0800

The Fall of the Dinosaurs (in Dominoes) [via]

"What's inexplicable to him is the ferocity of their conviction."

zarq — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 09:51:57 -0800

Dr. David Morrison is the senior scientist at NASA's Astrobiology Institute in the Ames Research Center in California. For the past eight years he's also run the Ask an Astrobiologist feature on the institute's website. "Started by a civic-minded intern, the column has become the go-to place for concerned citizens to write to NASA and ask if, as they'd heard on the internet, the world will truly end on December 21, 2012. Before he took the helm on Ask an Astrobiologist, Dr. Morrison hadn't heard anything about such theories. Now he can't escape them." Meet NASA's unofficial answerer of apocalypse emails -- at least until December 23rd. Videos with Dr. Morrison, from NASA Lunar Science on YouTube: * The Science of Doomsday 2012 * The Truth about Nibiru * The Truth About Comet Elenin * At ASP 2012 * The Truth about 2012 He has also created a special section on the "Ask an Astrobiologist" blog for doomsday questions.

Is It Moist On Mars?

The Whelk — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:54:46 -0800

New report suggests Mars may be full of liquid water - Smithsonianmag.com

Can we go Dad, can we?!

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:51:03 -0800

Making the Case for Human Missions to Asteroids

Bright lights, big galaxy.

curious nu — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:52:16 -0800

Phil Plait (previously) writes about asteroid 2011 AG5.

NASA's new ride

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:41:46 -0800

NASA is designing a spiffy new rocket, the Space Launch System, which will lob people and cargo to the moon, an asteroid and eventually Mars. The rocket and plans for it are a bit controversial. Everything from the price tag, who builds it and even the choice of the SLS have been cause for debate.

Pons-Brooks

jeffburdges — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:53:01 -0800

A reanalysis of historical astronomical observations suggests that Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago in 1883. On August 12th and 13th 1883, the astronomer José Bonilla at the observatory in Zacatecas Mexico observed 450 objects passing across the face of the Sun, which he described as surrounded by mist, suggesting fragments of a comet. As no other observatories witnessed the fragments at that time, Hector Manterola at the National Autonomous University of Mexico has argued using parallax that the comet must have passed within 8000 km of the Earth. "If they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event."

Awwwwww!

Sys Rq — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:11:45 -0800

Jupiter has lots. Mars has some, too, as does Neptune. Turns out Earth's got a trojan asteroid of its own. Meet 2010 TK7, the blue planet's new baby brother.

Dawn orbits Vesta

Argyle — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 17:49:21 -0800

Dawn spacecraft now orbits asteroid Vesta - After almost 4 years of space travel, the Dawn spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Vesta, an Arizona sized rock. Dawn tweets, takes pictures, and there is a Vesta Fiesta party to celebrate. After hanging out at Vesta for a year, Dawn will head off to visit the Ceres asteroid next, a three year trip. Amazing achievement of engineering, innovation and accuracy.

Space Rubbish

boo_radley — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:40:01 -0800

Space Rubbish Take asteroids, add in an upgrade system and more realistic rock fracturing and you get the frantic experience of Space Rubbish. (Flash)

Asteroid Shrugged

kmz — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:09:09 -0800

Sasha Volokh shows that some people are satire proof.

"FUBAR" cannot be expressed as a numeric output

Bora Horza Gobuchul — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:42:38 -0800

The nuclear weapons simulator at CarlosLabs (previously) has been updated to include fallout wind drift, pressure and thermal events to evaluate the impact of everything from a suitcase nuke to the Tsar Bomba on your city. The Missile Range Tool can show if you are in the vicinity of any delivery systems currently in service, or compare your location to the range of those used historically, such as the V2. For the effects of the cosmic collisions of asteroids and comets (and featuring rather more science) there's the Earth Impact Effects Program.

At least Michael Bay won't be directing...

zarq — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:30:06 -0800

In the year 2182 -- 172 years time -- there's a 1 in 1000 chance that we might be hit by a very large asteroid. With two centuries advance notice, will we be able to develop effective asteroid deflection techniques? Asteroid '(101955) 1999 RQ36' is part of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA), which have the possibility of hitting the Earth due to the closeness of their orbits, and they may cause damages. This PHA was discovered in 1999 and has around 560 meters in diameter. In practice, its orbit is well determined thanks to 290 optical observations and 13 radar measurements, but there is a significant "orbital uncertainty" because, besides gravity, its path is influenced by the Yarkovsky effect. Such disturbance slightly modifies the orbits of the Solar System's small objects because, when rotating, they radiate from one side the radiation they take from the sun through the other side. The research, which has been published in Icarus journal, predicts what could happen in the upcoming years considering this effect. Up to 2060, divergence of the impacting orbits is moderate; between 2060 and 2080 it increases 4 orders of magnitude because the asteroid will approach the Earth in those years; then, it increases again on a slight basis until another approach in 2162, it then decreases, and 2182 is the most likely year for the collision.
More from MSNBC

Pebbles from outer space

twoleftfeet — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:51:43 -0800

Most North Americans slept through the morning of January 13, 2010 as near-Earth object (NEO) 2010 AL30 silently moved across the night sky. Most of the time small asteroids zip past Earth harmlessly. We may not meet the goal of detecting and tracking potentially hazardous near-Earth objects . (Previously)

Giant pebbles from outer space

twoleftfeet — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:48 -0800

Stephen Hawking: "Asteroid Impacts Biggest Threat to Intelligent Life in the Galaxy" Dare I say... there's more outside. In a world distracted by global warming, struggles in Iran, and the death of Michael Jackson, it's hard to focus on the very long-term. But it's more than likely that the Earth will experience another event like Tunguska eventually. We're really at the infancy of deflecting a hazardous near-Earth object.

Asteroid Probe Set to "Collide" With Earth

eiro0701 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:08:23 -0800

A 1,124-pound (510-kilogram) space probe will "collide" with our home planet in June 2010 to simulate an approaching asteroid, Japanese scientists have announced. "We will monitor its movements, and the data will enable us to accurately predict the future paths of asteroids that are on course to come close to the Earth."

A dot in the sky, a rock in the hand

fantabulous timewaster — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:34:57 -0800

A dot in the sky becomes a rock in the hand. An asteroid near miss (as opposed to the more recent near hit) is the first time an object first seen in space is brought back to the laboratory. Technical and nontechnical papers at Nature, possibly behind a paywall.

The sky is falling

zeoslap — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:10:26 -0800

In the wake of a rather large meteor narrowly missing earth, loud booms have been heard from coast to coast. Here's hoping that's the end of it and there isn't something, larger on the way...

LOL Asteroid.

kldickson — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:34:37 -0800

Asteroid in the Sydney Morning Herald. An asteroid as big as a ten-story building passed by Earth. What do you think should have been done about it? It came within 600000 km of our atmosphere.

Objects in Space

Artw — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:44:06 -0800

Do gravity holes harbour planetary assassins?

Black Holes, Killer Asteroids and Spaghetti-fication, oh my!

jamaro — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:08:29 -0800

You're Going to Die II: The always entertaining astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson discusses a few of the ways the cosmos could kill you, for City Arts & Lectures. [previously]