Asteroid hits

[phil1993]

I'm not a doomongerer - I was sat with some global warming freaks the other day and had to argue with them that they're worrying about something so insignficiant, compared to the prospect of the Poles reversing, or smaller things such as disease or being hit by a car. In fact, the Magnetic Noth Pole has moved over 100km, in the last 10 years, but thats not my point here. I'm quite often fascinated by space so with the help of Wiki, I was looking up about asteroids and I've been astonished at how close Earth has come, or may well come, to impending doom.

Look at this:

4581 Asclepius is a small asteroid of the Apollo group that can approach Earth’s orbit to within 600,000 km; it was discovered in 1989 by the American astronomers Henry E. Holt (1929-) and Norman G. Thomas (1930-), and named after the Greek demigod of Medicine and Healing. Asclepius (1989 FC) passed by the Earth on March 22, 1989 at a distance of some 700,000 km, causing some media attention at that time.

The asteroid passed through the exact position where the Earth was only 6 hours before. Astronomers say that had the asteroid hit Earth, the impact would have been equivalent to one Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb detonating every second for 50 days. Subsequent discoveries revealed that a whole class of such objects exists, and that an object the size of the one which just missed Earth in March 1989, probably comes by undetected once every two or three years. "On the cosmic scale of things, that was a close call," said Dr. Henry Holt.

Also, there's a 1 in 45000 chance (very low) that an asteroid will hit Earth on the 12th/13th April 2036

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2037_ ... f_Risk.jpg

And another big asteroid may wipe out civilisation in... 2880

I'll update it later when I have more time but I was fascinated by these objects

[iceman1]

I am sure Superman will save us

[phil1993]

There is also this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

001010101010101010101010011101001 aaaaaah

[iceman1]

and there's also this

27/08/2009 - the end of the world for philipo

[phil1993]

Ah touche

[hannibal_rising]

In fact only the 5% of the objects that can hit the earth are under observation... lack of budget only.
We will know about a asteroid hitting the Earth when we will see it enter... a little bit late.
It has happened before, and will happen again... it is the most natural thing... the question is when ...

[phil1993]

that last line sounds like some sort of song

[swca92]

Yeah, a c**p one.

[blizzard]

I´ve read that even if an Asteroid would be on collision course with the earth, they could install solar sails on it and by that the asteroid would change it´s direction.

Forget about movies like Armageddon or Deep Impact, where they detonate megatonne atomic bombs inside the asteroids

All fiction

[Haukinen]

Oh please

They ''predicted'' that Mars is going to crash with earth in 1999

We'll just wait for December 2012

[hannibal_rising]

The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m.[1][2] on June 30, 1908 (June 17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time).[2]
Although the cause of the explosion is the subject of debate, it is commonly believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 miles) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.[3]
Although the meteor or comet burst in the air rather than directly hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 megatons[4] to as high as 30 megatons[5] of TNT, with 10–15 megatons the most likely[5]—roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear explosion set off in late February 1954, about 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.[6] The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles). It is estimated that the shockwave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.[7] This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies.

more on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

[TwistedArmco]

Not really that related, but..

http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php

..have a gander at that. Don't if you haven't already lost faith in humanity. I however, have.