1999 Total Destuction Of Earth (almost)

This image from the orbital shows how the comet did cross the orbit of Earth but was 1.5 AU away when it did, which isn't even considered a near earth object. I think it has to be less than 1 AU.



There are object much closer than that all the time and you can see them on the Nasa's NEO page. If you look at these objects, they are all much closer than this was.

Nothing to see here.

reply to post by Hal9000



Too close for comfort, if you ask me.
I know that is some like 135,000,000 miles away, but...

[edit on 25-10-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

reply to post by Scienceguy


This Comet was discovered by Edwin Holmes November 1862. It's existence has been known for a while and Brian Marsden's chaps at the Bureau of Astronomical telegrams will have its orbit catalogued. There was never any danger of a collision.

I think dbates explanation clears things up...

Damn Hal9000 you beat me to it!

The Comets closest approach was 1.484AU, by then the thing was almost Quadrature! This was never going to be a near miss. A misunderstanding of simple astronomy rears it's head again...

reply to post by SpeakerofTruth

You may think it was close, but there are NEO's much closer than that all the time, and we are still here. Checkout Nasa's NEO page. When something comes within a Lunar Distance (LU), then I'll start to worry.

For anyone interested, check out my thread on Comet 17P/Holmes where it has increased brightness from mag 17 to 2.8. Now that is something worth talking about.

Obscure Comet Brightens Suddenly

Originally posted by Scienceguy
--and in the very same space as Earth was some 99 days earlier --

The Earth travels around the Sun at 29.8km/s. In 99 days it would have traveled about 255 million kilometers.

It was an extinction level event that we apparently escaped by a factor of time only...

An extinction level event??!! I think you need to do a little more research there. Mars comes as close as 75 million kilometers every couple of years... We've had a whole slew of objects pass within a Lunar Distance, and even a couple that have skimmed under our satellites.

I think what he is trying to say that it passed through earths exact orbit. If it had come 99 days later it would have impacted the earth at that point which is at 1 AU.

Originally posted by Xeven
I think what he is trying to say that it passed through earths exact orbit. If it had come 99 days later it would have impacted the earth at that point which is at 1 AU.

It would make more sense if that was the aim of his thread.
Though, I'm sure plenty of objects have passed through our orbit, and most likely, plenty more will.
Kind of silly to make a thread, giving the illusion we really "dodged a bullet" so to speak.
Maybe the OP thinks it's some sort of big deal that the comet came within one AU, but, that's nothing to get excited about.
Here's a story of a comet actually surviving a plunge through the sun's atmosphere.
www.sciencedaily.com...

reply to post by Scienceguy


You guys can't seem to understand your problem.

The article, as well as dbates, is using the earth as a point of reference.
OP is trying to use the sun as a point of reference.

The earth is the point of reference. You don't say a planet is ten AUs, but rather it is ten AUs from X (point of reference).

edit:missed page two, beat me to it.

[edit on 25-10-2007 by WuTang]

a funny reading.

So do we have some close ones?

here is a nice one in Januar:

(2007 TU24) 2008-Jan-29 0.0037 1.4 250 m - 570 m 9.18

Miss Distance 0.0037AU or 1.4 LD (Lunar Distance)

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

I believe some few month in the past there was one passing with 1 LD.




[edit on 25-10-2007 by g210b]

Check this out everyone, there are thousands of asteroids and comets that are in near earth orbit. This is some scary stuff


neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

I have seen one on green before but that was as bad as I have seen it. I go to this site weekly for fun, just to see if we are going to become toast anytime soon.

Hardly a near miss really was it.
93,000,000+ miles away in 1999.

I nearly won the lottery today, I was just 6 numbers out.

As most allready said, 1AU is hardly a close call...

However, to thoes who claim 'the powers that be' would keep quite if they knew of an impending disaster via a comet or asteroid, I submit that 99% or more of the groups who activly track, calculate and project such things are privetly funded or owned, atop of the untold millions who may be tracking as a hobby.

Sure, they may have the technology to find it first(even this I doubt), but very soon after it would pop up on the radar(so to speak) of many others ready, willing and able to tell all. This is one thing that could not possibly be covered up, for too long...

Intresting topic none the less though.

[edit on 25-10-2007 by HomeBrew]

This is my favorite NEO.

Near Earth Asteroid - Apophis

99942 Apophis (previously known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4) is a near-Earth asteroid that caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 because initial observations indicated a relatively large probability (up to 2.7%) that it would strike the Earth in 2029.

This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August 2006. It broke the record for the highest level on the Torino Scale, being, for only a short time, a level 4, before it was lowered.[1]

As of October 19, 2006, the impact probability for April 13, 2036, is estimated at 1 in 45,000.

As of February 2005 it is predicted that the asteroid will pass just below the altitude of geosynchronous satellites, which are at 35,786 km (22,300 mi). Apophis' brightness will peak at magnitude 3.3, with a maximum angular speed of 42° per hour. Such a close approach by an asteroid of this size is expected to occur only every 1,300 years or so

It crosses Earth's orbit twice a year. I discovered this NEO accidently while doing some research for a story, i'd be a lot more concerned with NEO's like this one running into us at some stage.


mojo

[edit on 25/10/07 by mojo4sale]

Another neo from JPL:

As announced in MPEC 1999-N21, a trail of asteroid 1999 AN10 was discovered on plates taken in 1955 from the Palomar Sky Survey. The nominal and minimum-possible close-approach distance for the 2027 Earth encounter are now 0.00260 AU and 0.00258 AU respectively (about 389,000 km). Preliminary analyses indicate that the 2044 and 2046 impacting key-holes are well outside the current 2027 impact-plane error ellipse. This implies that those previously highly unlikely impacts are now virtually impossible. The next Earth close-approach is in 2076 and will likely be between 0.046 and 0.009 AU (6,900,000 and 1,300,000 km).

further updated

New Analyses Identify a Small Possibility that Asteroid 1999 AN10 Could Collide with Earth in 2044 or 2046

New orbital analyses for the kilometer-sized asteroid 1999 AN10 have revealed a remote chance that this object might collide with the Earth in the year 2044 or 2046. Although this asteroid will be monitored in the future, it is not thought to be a serious hazard to Earth at this time. Researchers Andrea Milani, Steven Chesley and Giovanni Valsecchi in Italy, as well the undersigned at JPL, have identified these new impacting possibilities by using new observational data, and by projecting the asteroid's motion somewhat farther into the future than before. New measurements of 1999 AN10, made over the last week and a half by amateur astronomer Frank Zoltowksi in Australia, have allowed astronomers to make significantly more precise orbital calculations, and the revised predictions indicate that the asteroid could approach the Earth particularly closely on August 7, 2027. The orbital motions of the Earth and the asteroid do not permit a collision in 2027, but the close approach will certainly change the asteroid's orbital path. During the past week, researchers have focused on the range of possible paths the asteroid could follow after 2027.

The accompanying diagram shows the uncertainty in the predicted close approach in 2027. The asteroid must pass through the plane of the diagram somewhere within an extremely skinny uncertainty ellipse, which appears simply as a line segment. New measurements taken over the weekend have moved the center of the ellipse (the most likely point of passage) out to a distance of about 200,000 km from the Earth, significantly farther than last week's estimate. The predicted point of passage may continue to bounce around within the ellipse as new data are added, but it cannot decrease below a minimum of about 37,000 km from the Earth's center.

external image

During the 2027 close approach, Earth's gravity will change the asteroid's orbit by an amount which depends on the precise location of the point of passage through the uncertainty ellipse. In particular, a range of post-2027 orbital periods are possible: a passage on the left side of the Earth in this diagram will decrease the orbital period; a passage on the right side will increase the period. If the asteroid passes through certain narrow "keyholes" in the uncertainty ellipse, its changed orbit will bring it back for another Earth close approach in a later year. The 2039 impacting scenario identified by Milani et al. last month actually required passage through two keyholes, one in the 2027 ellipse, and one in the 2034 ellipse, which explains why it was so unlikely (about one chance in a billion using last month's orbital estimate). This week's new observations have now moved the uncertainty ellipse completely off the 2034 keyhole, which indicates that this impacting scenario is no longer possible.

external image

The newly identified impacting possibilities for August 6, 2044 and August 7, 2046 each require passage through only a single keyhole in the 2027 ellipse, and the probabilities of impact for these cases are correspondingly larger, on the order of one chance in 500,000 for 2044, and one chance in five million for 2046. These odds of collision are larger than those for any other object, but they are still less than one hundredth the chance of an undiscovered asteroid of equivalent size striking the Earth sometime before 2044.

Just a little food for thought, JPL does know of potential impacts though they do not post it in the local newspaper or on the nightly news. For good reasons as stated in earlier posts...mass panic.

Still all in all, good post op.

Originally posted by Xeven
I think what he is trying to say that it passed through earths exact orbit. If it had come 99 days later it would have impacted the earth at that point which is at 1 AU.

Originally posted by WuTang
reply to post by Scienceguy

 

You guys can't seem to understand your problem.

The article, as well as dbates, is using the earth as a point of reference.
OP is trying to use the sun as a point of reference.

The earth is the point of reference. You don't say a planet is ten AUs, but rather it is ten AUs from X (point of reference).

edit:missed page two, beat me to it.

WuTang

Looks like you guys are seeing the same point of view-reference, and you have pointed out where i was not on the same page and actual considering from their specific one pointed focussed analytical point of view.

The scenario I am truly considering is that this comet could have been dead on and somewhere along the line something played in as an additional side factor and possibly slowed it 'just enough' to have it arrive 99 days late out of 33,000 years since it was last here.


What could possibly affect such timing?

A change in the orientation of the North/South orientation of the poles of the Sun to where the North/South poles of the Sun are seemingly stuck at an East West, equatorial placement:

Scientists also noted a puzzling behavior of the Sun's magnetic poles when first able to directly measure them on the outcome of the Sun's standard 11 year magnetic pole shift with instruments aboard the Ulysses space probe in 2001: "Instead of reversing completely, flipping north to south, the Sun's magnetic poles have only rotated at halfway and are now more or less lying sideways along the Sun's equator."


www.esa.int...

The overall perspective is not just the one lone point of: 'did it hit us or did it miss us... and then the matter is over...'

I am looking at all the other relevant details as in Spock's 3 level chess of the whole picture in order to size up the facts as to what could've been the outcome and by what factor of difference at a galactic level. When you sleuth an event from such a perspective as both deducing the matter down to one point, and to use inductive reasoning to follow back to the causative level-- this allows you to do one thing---

--figure it out from the whole and entire perspective.

Then you are able to independently weigh the seriousness of such a matter for yourself without being 'told' by someone you have to put trust and credibility in in taking their word... on any point, but rather speak from an ever evolving perspective in real time.

Why consider the difference at a galactic level..?

Because that is where beings and forces much larger than ourselves play in that neighborhood and when we are talking something similar to Comet V1 which has been perhaps-- approaching in our direction more than 10,000 years of a 33,000 year return cycle, it is astounding that it was off only by 99 days from 33,000 years kinda thing!

Such beings or forces would not have to do too much to trigger such a variance causing factor as even just a little brush with a miniscule amount of space dust to thicken the dark matter tidal forces of gravity and plasma medium and have it slow just enough to have it arrive 99 days late out of a possible 33,000 years since it was last here kinda-thing...



~








[edit on 26-10-2007 by Scienceguy]

[edit on 10/27/2007 by Djarums]

I am not seeing as HOW this comet had anything to do with PLANET X as the OP pointed out.............comets are NOT planets in my school of thought or am I missing something?

Oh, for the love of God. Why is it that some people jump on the latest astronomical event, and instantly proclaim that it's the second coming of the Messiah ? 17P/Holmes is a short period comet that was discovered in 1892. It has come nowhere near Earth in over a century since then, and it will continue to stay well clear for the forseeable future.

This place is unbelievable sometimes.


[edit on 26-10-2007 by Mogget]

Originally posted by mythatsabigprobe

An extinction level event??!! I think you need to do a little more research there. Mars comes as close as 75 million kilometers every couple of years... We've had a whole slew of objects pass within a Lunar Distance, and even a couple that have skimmed under our satellites.

"even a couple that have skimmed under our satellites."

What I find so funny about this: The first thought that came to my head was me poking around Google Earth and suddenly seeing an image of an asteroid when I should be seeing an overhead view of my house!

I think it would be at THIS point that my pants would bulge outward to the rear