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)
Is it too late to convince Hussein's followers to don their Nikes, put on their purple shrouds and hitch a ride?
Relative to what? Everything in the solar system has a considerable amount of inherent cumulative momentum. Let's take the earth for example: For this purpose, you can ignore rotational movement, but it is moving around the earth-moon barycenter. It also travels around the sun. The solar system itself rotates around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy also has velocity relative to other nearby galaxies, and other points in the universe as well.
Taken all together, the total velocity (even subtracting the rotational vector) is considerable. Now, add all that up and you get a number (I don't know what it is, and it changes moment my moment, but I know it is not a small number). Now, if this asteroid is approaching the earth from 'behind' it's absolute speed relative to the earth might be considerably less than if it were approaching directly from the 'front' of the planet's cumulative vector of motion.
On a related side-note... this is one of the things I really dislike about most time-travel stories. Almost no-one takes into account the fact that the earth moves! If you were to go a few seconds into the future, you could very well be either way up in the atmosphere, or deep beneath the crust. Either way, you're probably not going to have a great day if you don't have a vessel designed to handle the conditions where you pop up. Move a day in the future and you will be in outer space, and will have to travel a considerable distance to earth, if you only move in time, and not in space as well.
/rant off
Are the people predicting this the same ones who said that old Soviet satellite was going to come down yesterday? Last I checked, it was still 250 miles up.
I am relieved to know that the asteroid will not be harmed.
Hmmm.