Posted on 01/03/2008 4:38:58 PM PST by blam
Possible Mars impact highlights risk to Earth
00:01 04 January 2008
NewScientist.com news service
David Shiga
Asteroid 2007 WD5's orbit takes it from just outside Earth's orbit through Mars's orbit to the asteroid belt (Illustration: JPL/NASA)Tools
An asteroid hurtling towards Mars has a 1 in 28 chance of walloping the Red Planet, according to the latest calculations.
The rock's discovery just a couple of months before a possible impact begs the question of what would happen if it were instead headed for Earth – the only option, astronomers say, would be to evacuate any inhabited areas it might hit.
The asteroid, called 2007 WD5, was discovered on 20 November by a 1.5 metre telescope near Tucson, Arizona, US, that combs the skies as part of NASA's efforts to detect asteroids with a chance of hitting Earth.
It is an estimated 50 metres across, putting it in the same class as the Tunguska object that exploded over Siberia in 1908, flattening trees in an area extending many kilometres from the explosion.
Early calculations gave the asteroid a 1 in 75 chance of striking Mars on 30 January 2008.
Then, additional observations of the asteroid on 8 November were found in archival images from the 2.5-metre telescope at the Apache Point Observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, US. As a result, NASA's Near Earth Object Program, based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, reported on 28 December that the impact probability had increased to 3.9%, or about 1 in 20.
Temporary increase
But new observations taken between 29 December and 2 January using a 2.4-metre telescope at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico have revised the probability again, slightly lowering it to 3.6%, or about 1 in 28.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
And that is a small one....
150 feet across will take out more than a city. Think about all of the volcanic ash for the last 25 years being tossed into the atmosphere within a millisecond. That would take the edge of global warming for a few months.
Get used to eating canned food. Nothing will grow for about year. A sunny day at the beach would be a memory for a few years.
Starving will take folks minds off Brittany though. So we got that going for us.
Daddy would have gotten us Uzis...
Better them than us...
Those odds are better than my picking the winner in any given football game on any given day. I think I'm about 0 fer 1000 over the last few years.
Not even close. Mining asteroids for steel to build pipelines for natural gas and water is my interest. Bombardment by arachnoids is somebody else’s pipedream.
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