Posted on 02/17/2014 6:10:54 AM PST by BenLurkin
Near-Earth asteroid 2000 EM26 poses no threat of actually hitting the planet, but the online Slooh Space Camera will track the asteroid as it passes by Earth on Monday. The live Slooh webcast will start at 9 p.m. EST (0200 Feb. 18 GMT), and you can also watch the webcast directly through the Slooh website.
You can also watch the asteroid broadcast live on Space.com. Scientists estimate that 2000 EM26 is about 885 feet in diameter, and it is whizzing through the solar system at a break-neck 27,000 mph, according to Slooh. During its closest approach, the asteroid will fly about 8.8 lunar distances from Earth. [See photos of potentially dangerous asteroids]
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Links at the link
If I were able to shoot this asteroid (and if I had planned ahead), the bullet would take over a month to reach the target. Not really all that close
The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic pagan times. It was set intact into the Kaaba’s wall by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the year 605 A.D., five years before his first revelation. Since then it has been broken into a number of fragments and is now cemented into a silver frame in the side of the Kaaba. Its physical appearance is that of a fragmented dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of millions of pilgrims. Islamic tradition holds that it fell from Heaven to show Adam and Eve where to build an altar. Although it has often been described as a meteorite, this hypothesis is now uncertain.
That’s about 1/6th of a mile wide.
An asteroid just half a mile wide wiped out the dinosaurs
These things are much more prevalant than we thought. There was just a recent photo of a new impact on the moon (last month) and also on Mars (sometime since last year) and remember Shoemaker-Levy left earth-sized holes in Jupiter.
But at least NASA is getting some important “muslim outreach” work done...
FMCDH(BITS)
Which means even if you shoot NOW, you'd hit it after it has passed Earth. Like shooting it in the BACK as it's leaving. You COWARD! :)
Is it too late to convince Hussein's followers to don their Nikes, put on their purple shrouds and hitch a ride?
Unless I dropped a decimal point somewhere (quite possible), a bullet fired now from earth would never reach it.
3000 fps equates to about 2000 mph. The object is going about 15x faster. You can’t shoot it in the back no matter how hard you try! :)
...2000 EM26 is about 885 feet in diameter... is whizzing through the solar system at... 27,000 mph... will fly about 8.8 lunar distances from Earth.
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IMO, this one is worthy of a big /yawn.
I’m quite certain you are right, no matter how high-powered the rifle. The effort would equate to Obama’s job-creating strategies.
Well put! One quibble, the Chicxulub bolide was about six miles across, but a half-mile object would destroy civilization. This one is about 64 times bigger (in volume) than the Tunguska object, which flattened hundreds of square miles and left no apparent crater.
Sounds like the Tunguska object came apart in the atmosphere as an air burst, rather than any significant amount hitting the ground as a solid object.
This is something I've been curious about for a while, namely the tensile strength of the average asteroid. Is it a hard, solid object (like a rock) or a loose aggregate of dust, mainly held together by its own microgravity?
In other words, if you put a chunk of steel in its path, so that it hit at several miles-per-second, would the impact knock a chip off the asteroid, or would it explode a big chunk off?
OH no! Don’t do that! If you try to reduce the size of an asteroid by blowing it apart, etc. it will do MORE damage when the pieces hit, even if some of it is diverted or pulverized.
Unless the pieces are small enough that they would burn up in the atmosphere.
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