It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by dbates
1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. That's about 93,000,000 miles.
Researchers estimate that on 1 February, 2019, its impact velocity on the Earth would be 28 km a second - enough to wipe out a continent and cause global climate changes.
TOn impact, it could have the effect of 20 million Hiroshima atomic bombs, a spokesman for the British government's Near Earth Object Information Centre told BBC radio.
Apophis had been intermittently tracked since its discovery in June last year but, in December, it started causing serious concern. Projecting the orbit of the asteroid into the future, astronomers had calculated that the odds of it hitting the Earth in 2029 were alarming. As more observations came in, the odds got higher.
Originally posted by dbates
1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. That's about 93,000,000 miles. You have to drop down several decimal places for it to be considered close. A close call would look like .0008 AU.
Originally posted by dbates
I don't think you understand. 1 AU is equal to the distance from the Sun to the Earth. Saying it was 1.01 AU means it was further away from us than the sun is. 1.000000000000000008 is still further away than 1.
I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but I think you're missing a basic mathematic concept. A near miss would need to be much lower than 1. It would look like 0.0008 or something of that nature.
One other point you are missing is that crossing earth's orbit is not all that's needed for a near miss. Space is 4 dimensional. For a near miss you would have to be at the correct X Y Z coordinates at the proper time.
[edit on 25-10-2007 by dbates]
Originally posted by Scienceguy
on January 1st it was not greater or less than 1 AU --
It was Exactly 1 AU as stated on the chart.
In fact it had zone into 1 AU on the 31st and stayed there through the 2nd.
Originally posted by Where2Hide2006
Wow, this is Amazing!!!
When I was still in Highschool (class of 99') I was reading a lot of Nostradamus' work relating to the new millenia. What I came to discover is that Nostradamus Predicted a Comet on Sept. 23rd, 1999... I tried to warn people that i cared about about the coming callamity... Then Sept 23rd (the 3rd Thursday in the 9th month) came and went and nothing happened at all. I looked like a fool, because I honestly thought I had cracked some kind of Nostradamus Code.
Now I find out, 8 years later, that I was almost right.
This is amazing.
Note: Nostradamus also predicted 9-11, and Huricane Katrina.
[edit on 25-10-2007 by Where2Hide2006]