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Posted on 10/03/2003 8:37:27 AM PDT by blam
Closest asteroid yet flies past Earth
18:17 02 October 03
NewScientist.com news service
An asteroid about the size of a small house passed just 88,000 kilometres from the Earth by on Saturday 27 September - the closest approach of a natural object ever recorded. Geostationary communication satellites circle the Earth 42,000km from the planet's centre.
The asteroid, designated 2003 SQ222, came from inside the Earth's orbit and so was only spotted after it had whizzed by. The first sighting was on Sunday 28 by the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search program in Arizona, US.
Amateur astronomer Peter Birtwhistle of Great Shefford, Berkshire, UK, then photographed it on Monday 29. This provided data that helped Brian Marsden, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to calculate its orbit.
The asteroid's 1.85-year orbit is quite eccentric, indicating it cannot be a man-made object, Marsden says. He estimates the asteroid measured less than 10 metres. This is too small to have posed a danger to Earth, although it would have made a spectacular fireball had it entered the atmosphere.
House fires
The passage came at about 2300 GMT, only 10 hours after a bright fireball streaked over the Orissa region of India. Indian villagers have found pieces of the meteorite, which reportedly cause two house fires. However, this event was not connected to the fly past of 2003 SQ222, says Marsden.
The previous record for closest approach of an asteroid - 108,000km measured from the centre of the Earth - was set in 1994 by another 10m object named 1994 XM1.
But the third-closest approach - at 120,000km - was object 2002 MN, which was about 80m in diameter. If on target, that could have exploded in the Earth's lower atmosphere and devastated a couple of thousand square kilometres on the ground.
Another small asteroid, 2003 SW130, missed the Earth by 160,000km on 19 September, making it a busy month for asteroid watchers.
Jeff Hecht
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Depends on the type of meteorite. One that's mostly iron would hold together, and make a crater. Not catastrophic (except to you, if it landed within a mile of your house!) One that's rocky would be more apt to break up in the atmosphere, and one more like a dirty snowball would definitely do so.
The passage came at about 2300 GMT, only 10 hours after a bright fireball streaked over the Orissa region of India. Indian villagers have found pieces of the meteorite, which reportedly cause two house fires.
Wouldn't you say that the second one mentioned was just a tad closer?
Neat. We had five earthquakes in 1997 and before that, none.
Victor Clube and associates regressed the 4 independent streams of the Taurid meteor complex back via computer sim to a singular ident.
Dating periods range from evolution on the periphery of our solar sytem..to the inner planetary.
50,000 yrs..cycling to 20,000.
Some consideration is give..that the fragments of the percieved *Super Comet were still slamming into the Earth....Mars as late as our Circa 12,000 BP window..with a few more sizeable impactors augering in during the Bronze age.
The Earth crosses these 4 independent streams ...nearly a 1/4 of each years passage around the Sun is the time interval we are in potential bombardment.
Some assay that most of the big stuff has been vacumned up by Jupiter..Mars..our Earth.
Big lurker Encke is part of this stream.
The other consideration is that size singular does not mean you will not get pasted..
That impactors..or the Tunguska scale might exist still..and in swarms.
so then,,the math calculus...that you eventually get hit by a Chixalub..or take a Tunguska.
NASA/JPL did a computer regress of a asteriod pathway..and concluded that it may be the remains of a moon which was fragmented..either by gravametrics..or by impact.
Most of the sizeable peices augering in somewhere..but tell tale none the less..that this debrie field was a singular ident....by the scale/volume of debrie..considered to be a small moon.
NASA was suprised when orbitors arrived at Mars.
Preconcieved views were imemdiately overturned.
Mars had a magnetic field....now located at its surface and underlying surface.
The magnetude was an eye opener.
Mars also revealed a chaotic pattern of fused magnetic bars in its inner crust.
Mars was percieved to have had in past ages....a magnetic dynamo like the Earth.
Torn apart..its signature now left in its surface layers.
The Line of Dichotomy...nearly a 1/3rd of Mars's crust missing,
bounced off into space?
The huge Valles Marineris trench....a fracture wave rupture from impactors augering into Mars?
or an Electrical arc/gouging ..Anode/Cathode event as percieved by Electric Universe followers?
Mars looks like a Murder Victim.
The debate now...when did this occur?
Millions and millions of yrs ago..some say,
others..who are considering Clube/Napier and Velikovsky Catastrophism....consider this may have occured not to long ago.
in the 20,000 yr to present window.
Yes, and Conecuh(sp) County just north of Mobile.
True of earth also. Our crust didn't go far, but where is Mars' crust?
Only one problem: "came from inside the Earth's orbit and so was only spotted after it had whizzed by."
"You never hear (or see) the one that gets ya".
For me..its a done deal...
The old conformity for millions of years...Accretion disc thingy doesn't cut it.
Especially Carl Sagan one liners..like *Runnaway greenhouse.
Mars is just mangled..with many tell tale signs of electrical interface sacrs.
Earth has them too..
Article:
MARS and the GRAND CANYON
So many Electrical value idents being discovered.
It is estimated that Saturn has a liquid metallic hydrogen sea 13,500 km deep (metallic by virtue of its property to conduct electricity - the electrons are freely moving)
Wind speeds in Saturn being over three times those observed at Jupiter. High temperatures: Pioneer-Saturn measured the temperatures in Saturn's ionosphere to be 1250 degrees K. "This high temperature requires an extensive energy source other than the Sun. This phenomena was also observed at Jupiter." (Quote from 1990 NASA news )
Jupiter..Electrically machining Io.[Articles at the Electric Universe/Holoscience site]
Neptune and Uranus...both with Liquid metal slurry interiors....whirling about at magnetic inclination offset...
Behaving like *Oscillating Superconductors.
Where's Mars crust?
Who knows...
Did the planet undergo heating and near liquification at its surface?
Is the Line of Dichotomy a collapse marker..the crustal mass....sinking down into the planet?
or bounced off into space?
So many theories of past decades being overturned now.
Halton Arps *Red shift discoveries....all manner of different Redshift values being assayed in the same spacial quadrant.
if Big bang was true..and Red Shift meant age..then there is a problem..as the Red shift idents mean differing ages of millions of years..all next to each other.
Electric Universe makes more sense to me..
It does not have all the answers..and is certain to be wrong in many construct idents.
Its just way better than Carl Sagans goofy one liners.
Sometimes I think I should have become a welder. I only got a B in Welding, though, and I can't tolerate the jeers and taunts when I drop some slag inside my collar while trying to do an overhead weld. Kinetic energy is deserving of respect, though, since it can easily overcome electrical binding energy. A good asteroid impact would not only turn solid rock to a gas but it would produce a blinding flash as the gas was ionized. Not of nuclear level, but easily of MOAB category. More than just MOAB--the grandmother of MOAB.
feh -- by the standards of this article, every little rock is an "asteroid."
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