Expert says meteor could wipe out Earth next week despite Nasa's reassurance that we're safe

How about those asteroids that are not in any kind of orbit ,
that come from beyond our solar system ?
Anything is possible , especially if the Big guy
wills it so ..... has He ?

not that I'm aware of

a reply to: eriktheawful

NASA estimates that they've identified over 90% of all NEO's larger than 1 kilometer.

But to me, that begs the question:

How do they know they've got over 90% of them ? If you don't know something exists, how can you calculate it into your estimates ?

So... do they really know how many planet-killers are out there ?
Or are they just grasping at straws and giving it their best guesstimate ?



Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that NASA has some sooper seekrit nefarious agenda going on or anything like that... I'm just asking the questions that, to me, are simple common sense questions to ponder.

The real question is what can we do, even if we spot it?
Where do we run? Left? Right? Up the mountains? Who can say where will it hit, and how the rest of the earth will be affected?
Even if they see it, and let us know (which I don't believe) there's no time to do something, there's nowhere to run.
So if it comes, let it come. Until then I won't waste my peace of mind with it.

It doesn't have to be ELE. All it would take is something that could throw up enough matter to create a volcanic effect that would throw the climate slightly out of whack. That added to the immediate regional effects would be bad enough. Then when you add in the unavoidable economic effects a hit in a highly populated and/or developed area would be.

a reply to: CranialSponge

Thank you for this, it's been something I have been trying to point out in various threads.

We're humans, not some magical fact book. We don't know all the answers and to be honest, we're not 100% of everything we've claimed to be correct about to this day.

We simply don't know, we can make educated guesses and in some cases we can be 99.9% sure, but we are the ones who learned and recorded much of the information current and future generations use on top of their own opinions and theories.

It's been shown in the past that we made mistakes and will be shown again. But sooner or later our ignorance and arrogance will catch up with us if we're not careful.

a reply to: Tranceopticalinclined

Agreed.

Science is forever progressing and evolving with new information getting added to the roster.

Thus, it frustrates me to no end when they make a claim such as "we've identified over 90% of all NEO's". There's absolutely no way to state those numbers without knowing what's in existence. And you can't know what's in existence until you've identified 100% of all NEO's.

Mathematical probabilities be damned.

For all they know, that 90% might turn out to be 60% when they make more discoveries 5, 10, 20 years down the road.

NASA can track all the known NEO's, but we are forgetting one thing.
Asteroids are discovered on a daily basis. So we can wake up one morning to hear the news that we've got a couple of days tops before it hits.
Remember the one, was it last year, don't remember, which landed in the Indian ocean?? I think it was discovered three hours prior to hit. Sowwy, don't have linky.

well, there goes my picnic.

a reply to: CranialSponge

The larger asteroids (over 1/2 mile wide) are much easier to spot (those that are in NEOs) than those which are much smaller (say only a football field wide or smaller).

Comet hunters, using only their own backyard telescopes were able to find small (only a mile or 2 wide) comets, while still very far out and no tails, decades ago, and still do today, with even more accuracy.

It's not hard to image large sections of the sky over several nights, and then "blink" those images to catch motion of even very small objects that are only 1/2 mile wide, but close enough (NEOs) to detect via digital imaging.

Better yet: computer software now helps detect that too.

So, given enough time, it is possible to map out most of what are NEOs. After a while, your images of the sky and scanning for movement will start showing the same things over with (already discovered asteroids), and by knowing that, you're able to work out a model of the density of them.

That in turn gives you a percentage of what has been found.

I'm not really worried about any ELE sneaking up on us in the form of a asteroid big enough to cause that.

I'd be more worried about the tiny ones the size of a large truck, that if they get low enough can explode and level an entire city.

Again: those tiny ones won't end the world. But they certainly would make for a bad day.

hooray..someone else with a prediction which includes the magical date of 23rd september!!
How many bandwagon jumpers is that now?

Nothing major will happen of course-but if it does no one will be able to say I was wrong 'cause you'll all be dead.
So there.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Oh I agree, we can't sit here worried about everything flying around us.

The cosmos are a volatile shooting gallery and if we were to worry ourselves about all of it, we'd be spending our entire lives hiding in our bunkers shaking in our boots.

And yes, given enough time we will be able to map every regularly orbiting NEO, but we're certainly not there yet.




... and then there's always going to be those unknown goodies (the ones that don't orbit our vicinity in any predictable manner that we've mapped) that suddenly come out of nowhere and surprise us.

Ya, there is a grey area in asteroid size that is undetectable but large enough to cause ELE. We have never been safe.......but it's not like we humans treat this planet with the respect it deserves anyway...so..........

a reply to: Frocharocha

Well if that's the case, workers all over the world should be given next week off for one hell of a final cook-out with friends and families.

So, he hasn't identified an actual object but he has identified an actual date range - the same date range that just happens to coincide with the latest online doom-porn predictions of CERN's dimensional bloodmoon gateway for the popes visit to the US etc.

Understood - cheers - lets revisit this on the 30th September and see where we're at.

If a big one were to whack us, I wonder if we would see the pretty colors that are shown in the artists conception in the OP?

Expert says meteor could wipe out Earth next week despite Nasa's reassurance that we're safe.

Ya know?

I don't have much faith in 'experts' anymore.

They been so wrong so often, about so many things.

I just stopped listening.

What the hell is a "research expert" and how does one of these got to do with the trajectory of a comet? Sounds kind of fishy, kind of like "community organizer", both sound good but no one really knows what one does....

a reply to: Frocharocha

The article also tried to counter his idea by saying that Nasa could not miss an Asteroid that big coming towards us, which i agree:

In all honesty, I truly detest reading an article where the author feels compelled to attempt to make up your mind for you. I'm not a child. Give me the facts. Give me your *opinion*, and state it as such.

Just don't insult me.

I truly feel it is the zenith of hubris to think that NASA can detect anything and everything potentially incoming from the galaxy. With their expertise and knowledge, it is a safe bet to make in Vegas that we will NOT be hit? Yepp.

Just don't tell me it absolutely won't happen because you say it won't.

God damn! I really didn't feel like dying next week... sigh