Nasa says asteroid TX68 could hit Earth, then SpaceWeather removes it!

I'm a long-time Northern Lights enthusiast, and a student of astronomy in general. As long as I've been adept at getting info from the internet, one of my daily website checks has been SpaceWeather.com. Lots of info about sunspots, the interplanetary magnetic field, solar flares, Aurora Borealis and Australis, all that good stuff.

There's also info on all the NEOs (Near Earth Objects) that have been discovered and are being tracked by instruments, along with some data about each object's attributes. Here's a cropped screenshot of the aforementioned info from the site-



Up until February 25, SpaceWeather.com still listed Near-Earth Object 2013 TX68 with the same predicted numbers that had been there for months- including a closest approach distance of 0.044 LD (Lunar Distances).

Some time on the 25th/26th, after a NASA story about the possibility of an impending Earth impact from 2013 TX68- not in March of this year (a couple weeks from now), but on its next close approach in 2017- TX68 was removed from the list of NEOs. I saw this for myself, but I didn't think to screenshot that. What I did screenshot was the image below on the 27th.



As you can see, the list had been totally cleared- though the heading still says there are 1,683 'Potentially Hazardous Asteroids' being tracked... that left me scratching my head. Quite a strange coincidence. I did a little digging, and found that the alteration to the NEO list coincided with an admission by NASA that object TX68 could smash into Earth. Here's the story on UK website The Mirror-

www.mirror.co.uk...

Then early Saturday morning, I checked SpaceWeather.com to see if all was the same, list empty. And I saw this-



Not only was the NEO list back up, but 2013 TX68 had returned, albeit shaded in a foreboding black color. Its closest approach distance had been changed, increased to 12.6 LD. I encourage you to check it out for yourself. If you wish, you can even use the WayBackMachine Internet archive to verify the alterations to the NEO list.

Things like this make my conspiracy spidey senses tingle... like when the Chelyabinsk meteorite exploded, there was a close approach predicted the very same day. After the explosion over Russia, the claim of govts was that the two incidents were completely unrelated, and that it was a total coincidence- something like a trillion to one odds was what they said, if I remember correctly. Doing a bit more digging, I found some pretty credible evidence showing that US govt agencies would classify as top secret any object found to be on a possible collision course with our planet. If true, this isn't surprising, but it is unsettling.

So I'll be keeping my eyes on the sky, and on news reports for the first couple weeks of March. If anything astronomical happens and we're still around to chat about it, you heard it here first, friends!

Thoughts?

EDIT: In the time it's taken me to type up this post, upload and link the screenshots and all, there's a Brand-new article on SpaceWeather.com directly addressing this whole story, and dismissing any suggestion that an impact is possible. However, I don't find this entirely dissuasive- the way this has unfolded just doesn't ring perfectly true for me. I guess we'll see if anything happens.

If something were coming I highly doubt they'd tell us, so I wouldn't doubt it. I also wouldn't start packing my bug out bag just yet, but it's never bad to be prepared.

a reply to: M4nWithNoN4me

I have noticed some anomalies like that in the past. Do you know of any other sites that may keep the actual data on other countries government sites like Russia, China, Japan, etc.? I could see some admin getting feedback they are scaring people and change the data. They did say it was recalculated to be a range. However, I don't recall the upper range.

The Mirror article you shared said there is a 1-in-250 million chance of TX68 colliding with Earth in September of next year. Not this year's flyby.

it was removed from the sentry list, as new calculations show no risk for a hundred years.
its also not potentially hazardous, being less than 100 metres, would be a nice fireball however.
follow the sentry list for near earth objects.
space weather is great for aurora watching!

a reply to: M4nWithNoN4me

When is this next approach in 2017?

a reply to: M4nWithNoN4me

In the time it's taken me to type up this post, upload and link the screenshots and all, there's a Brand-new article on SpaceWeather.com directly addressing this whole story, and dismissing any suggestion that an impact is possible. However, I don't find this entirely dissuasive- the way this has unfolded just doesn't ring perfectly true for me. I guess we'll see if anything happens.

I would submit that you were annoyed when you realized that all the effort you put into creating this thread was made completely redundant by the article spaceweather.com had made (in the meantime) addressing the suggestion that an impact was possible.
Instead of deleting the thread you decided that you'll upload it anyway and infer that there is now something suspicious about spaceweather.com addressing the whole issue with a new article.

Yeah, fair enough, it appears to be explained. Really had me wondering though.

Thanks for the link to that Sentry List stinkelbaum, really great resource.

Mods, please feel free to delete

a reply to: M4nWithNoN4me

Is there a way to double-check the asteroid's distance with the help of an astronomer or a web-linked telescope?

a reply to: M4nWithNoN4me

This is why ATS is great,

Problem - Discussion - Solution

and, we all learned something on the way,

personally i dont think any space object will kill us, were doing a good job ourselves,

Peace!

30m?

Bring it.

I find myself hoping that we will get hit, so I have an excuse to go out and take up smoking again today.

a reply to: M4nWithNoN4me

Even if it hits up, it's really small, most likely won't survive the atmospheric entry. For comparison, this one is 30 meters, the Chelyabinsk one was about 17 meters. We might get a big firework show, but no ELE just yet.

a reply to: daaskapital So what you are saying is, there is still a chance !!! .....just kidding,

a reply to: Iamnotadoctor Yeah, I like the way it was done, it wasn't condescending like some of the comments I read on here.

originally posted by: stinkelbaum
it was removed from the sentry list, as new calculations show no risk for a hundred years.
its also not potentially hazardous, being less than 100 metres, would be a nice fireball however.
follow the sentry list for near earth objects.
space weather is great for aurora watching!

If its rock, fair enough, if its nickel/iron, find a nice deep cave somewhere, the impact in the wrong place, like a plate boundary, could be quite injurious to our lovely planet.

a reply to: pikestaff

It's only 30m in size. That won't happen unless it's a 30m white dwarf star.

a reply to: Iamnotadoctor

And just to clarify, buddy, I checked SpaceWeather.com immediately before posting, and all was still status quo. A minute after I started the thread, I looked again and the new article was up there. I'm not a mod. So unless there's something I don't know about, I couldn't just "Delete the thread", as you accused me of showing irrationality and irresponsibility for not doing myself.

a reply to: M4nWithNoN4me

I'll pay that...
The best I can do is a star and a flag.

They been tracking these for how long?

The one that hit Russia (the only hit in all this time) wasn't tracked. It came out of the sun, I think.

The ones that will get us always will.