Per NASA Asteroid 101955 Bennu shown as 0.00 distance from earth 9-24-2186

a reply to: Mogget

I know wait 100 years and we will land it on earth and mine it

All is explained here: www.space.com...

Bennu is officially classified as a potentially dangerous asteroid. In fact, there's an 0.037 percent (or 1-in-2,700) chance that it will strike Earth in the last quarter of the 22nd century, NASA scientists have calculated.

Specifically, that's the probability that, during an Earthy flyby in 2135, Bennu will hit a special orbit-altering "keyhole" that will send it on a collision course with the planet later in the century.

OSIRIS-REx will help scientists refine those odds, by refining their understanding of Bennu's orbit. (That orbit, by the way, is already the best-known of any asteroid, Lauretta said; thanks to extensive observations since Bennu's 1999 discovery, astronomers have nailed the space rock's orbital radius down to within 20 feet, or 6 m.)

"Our uncertainties will shrink, so that will allow us to recalculate the impact probability," Lauretta said. "We don't know which direction it'll go. It could go down, because we just eliminated a bunch of possible keyholes that Bennu may hit. Or it may go up, because in the area that's left we have a higher concentration of keyholes compared to the overall area of the uncertainty plane."

It's too early to say anything definitely, and we need to wait for future close passes, which will determine the next ones.

a reply to: Slichter

The nature of Bennu is not effected by what kind of site this is Slichter!

Also, realistically, Mark Twain is unlikely to have been the only person to be born on, and die close to the time of the arrival of Haley's Comet. And Hale Bopp didn't do a damned thing to Heaven's Gate or their idiot leader either. HG self terminated in order to comply with their own fantasies. The passage of Hale Bopp was not the cause of their demise. Consumption of phenobarbital, flavoured with apple sauce, followed by a vodka chaser and wrapping their heads in plastic bags to induce asphyxia, was the cause of death for the members of Heaven's Gate. The comet did not land on their compound, lazers were not fired from the ship they believed to be travelling in its wake. They self terminated.

The passage of materials through this solar system only have one ACTUAL effect, and that is if they happen to HIT anything. As for Pioneer 10... I don't know, what do you think? Personally, I think in 1972, the probe would have had a difficult time picking up Bennu, since the on board instruments of the time were less versatile than they are these days, and were designed primarily for examining the asteroid belt as a whole feature of the solar system, rather than individual parts thereof, and for taking pictures of Jupiter, which, you will note, is bloody enormous, and assuming appropriate range and stability of the craft, relatively easy to take pictures of. As it is, I believe that Pioneer 10 only took about 500 images in total, and having looked at its instrumentation, its onboard experiments and such, there is nothing on there that would lend itself to detecting the presence of Bennu. It was programmed and controlled in such a way as to carry out tasks in a specific order, and those were the tasks it completed. From what I understand of its construction and capacity, it could have been within sight of Bennu and missed its existence completely.

a reply to: TrueBrit

All true!

And it takes more than simple coincidence to make a place in official history.
Nevertheless for those of us that are a little too creative for our own good there might be evidence to support a UFO tale about Pioneer 10 having a clandestine encounter.

The spacecraft had an initial spin rate of 30 rpm. Twenty minutes following the launch, the vehicle's three booms were extended, which slowed the rotation rate to 4.8 rpm. This rate was maintained throughout the voyage. The launch vehicle accelerated the probe for net interval of 17 minutes, reaching a velocity of 51,682 km/h (32,114 mph).

a reply to: TrueBrit

"Self terminated"

I like that one!

a reply to: Slichter

What evidence would that be?

* strokes beard *

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Bonnie Lou Nettles later known as Ti, was co-leader of the group.
Apparently their "resonant" order would have taken her back to do.
They were into music and elecronics..

a reply to: TrueBrit

I would look at the history of "prediction" Kirkwood gaps etc.
Lots of secrecy there for conspiracies.
Asteroid Pallas, meteor showers maybe?
The movie "Contact" at Arecibo featured a good example of UFO meteor shower.

a reply to: Slichter

* sigh *

Those are not evidence in and of themselves, and themselves REQUIRE evidence to support them, evidence which is lacking.

How likely is it that we send nuclear bombs to blow it up and then we get bombarded by nuclear fallout and the exploded fragments of it...lol

a reply to: Buvvy

Looks like humanity has under 196 years to pull it's heads out of war and toward space. Thankfully non of us here today will witness their failure.

a reply to: EternalSolace

The people of today are those whose job it is to lay the groundwork for their success, and as I have stated before, throwing your hands up because its all in the future will make you as responsible for whatever failure may arise, as the people living at the time are, if not more so. We are under very little time pressure, and have the advantage of considering solutions to these problems and ways to prepare our species to solve them, without the threat of our immediate doom. We have an advantage over the people who will live closer to the time of impact for this object.

Unlike the people of that period in history, we are not facing an imminent crisis of the scale that a Bennu impact would represent. Although not a planet killer, or capable of wiping out the entire species, it would be a catastrophe of a scale that would mean it be virtually impossible that it would not cause major destruction, whether it hit land or sea. But it is one that we can think about in abstraction, divorced from the dangers associated therewith. That separation is something that we can use to our advantage. It also must be said that the people of the future trying to solve this issue will come up against some significant problems that we, in this period in history, would not.

For one thing, the easiest and best solutions to the Bennu issue, take a long, long time to bare fruit. For example, sending a craft out to Bennu's orbit, with the intention of using it like a gravity tractor, would work best over a long period of time, allowing the change in orbit to be performed slowly and in a controlled manner, with plenty of time to think about the future implications of its new orbital path, with regard to the possibility of future intersections with that object. Other options also will work best and be easiest to implement, if they are enacted sooner (this century) than if they are left till much later, because the later its left, the more pronounced the alteration in the objects course in order to prevent impact will be. More pronounced changes are harder to accomplish, and rushing the thing might mean that the solution that is reached is a mere stop gap.

Using the time we have from now, to get a mission launched to stave off this threat before the next quarter century is up, would be the smart and best play, allowing plenty of time for an ideal new orbital pathway to be arrived at on the whiteboard, and the process of arriving at that new pathway begun with plenty of time for correction, if unexpected stumbling blocks come up with the mission. In short, the people of the next century should not be the ones to deal with this crisis in terms of actually physically and intellectually solving it. We should. We are in the best position to do so.

This is the Wernher von Braun threat sequence in action.

originally posted by: SayonaraJupiter
This is the Wernher von Braun threat sequence in action.

Look who's back!

Don't worry guys AI will save the planet from that, but you all will be dead in the next 50 years.

a reply to: TrueBrit

I agree with your sentiment, however I wish people could be consistent. If we're laying the groundwork for future generations, it might be a good idea to find ways to reduce spending so we don't load future generations with debt. Hell, we may even be able to afford a mission if our govt's were a bit more careful with our money.

How about this - take money from the social security pot and fund a mission?

a reply to: Lysergic

Some future Wernher von Braun will save the planet.
AI is useless, it spits out answers that just breed more questions.
What if John Denver's lyrics had stated that "he was born in the winter of his 23rd year"?

They will have to wait till after the keyhole event.

a reply to: UKTruth

Theres no need to do that.

Tightening corporate taxation so it simply cannot be dodged or avoided, which is perfectly possible just hideously unpopular, would make it possible for our country to pay for our NHS and other public services, and have surplus in reserve to fund a portion of a project such as would be required to solve the asteroid problem, in conjunction with other nations. If other nations also performed the same tightening to prevent the deliberate artificial unbalancing of society and the direction of the flow of finance, there are only very few nations on the planet that could not also make a contribution.

Corruption crackdowns would be a much fairer way of acquiring the monies to see these things done, and less likely to end up killing innocent people, which has been the effect of virtually every attack on the social security network, certainly in our country, if not in others.

a reply to: SayonaraJupiter

This again, eh?

Do you have a source for what WvB is supposed to have said, as opposed to what someone else claims he said?

Guess not, then.