Asteroid explosion over Indonesia raises fears about Earth's defences

Asteroid explosion over Indonesia raises fears about Earth's defences

www.telegraph.co.uk...

On 8 October, the rock crashed into the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The blast was heard by monitoring stations 10,000 miles away, according to a report by scientists at the University of Western Ontario.

Scientists are concerned that it was not spotted by any telescopes, and that had it been larger it could have caused a disaster.
The asteroid, estimated to have been around 10 metres (30ft) across, hit the atmosphere at an estimated 45,000mph.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Edit,fix link

[edit on 27/10/2009 by Silcone Synapse]

This shows how easy it is for a space based object to be missed by earth based observers.
Had the asteroid been a little bit bigger,this could have been catastropic,the story goes on to say.
It makes you wonder how many other asteroids there are on a collision course with Earth that no one has yet noticed.

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6444895/Asteroid-explosion-over-Indonesia-raises-fears-about-Earths-defences.html]www.telegraph.co.uk[/u rl]
(visit the link for the full news article)

From NASA:

A report from Elizabeth Silber and Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario indicates that several international very-long wavelength infrasound detectors recorded the blast and fixed the position near the coastal city of Bone in South Sulawesi, island of Sulewesi. They note that the blast was in the 10 to 50 kT range with the higher end of this range being more likely. Assuming an estimated size of about 5-10 meters in diameter, we would expect a fireball event of this magnitude about once every 2 to 12 years on average. As a rule, the most common types of stony asteroids would not be expected to cause ground damage unless their diameters were about 25 meters in diameter or larger.

neo.jpl.nasa.gov...

No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact. That is not surprising, given that only a tiny fraction of asteroids smaller than 100 metres across have been catalogued, says Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet objects as small as 20 or 30 metres across may be capable of doing damage on the ground, he says. "If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes," says Spahr. "A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars."

www.newscientist.com...

[edit on 27/10/2009 by Silcone Synapse]

s+f nice post. It does make ya wonder. I have wondered how we have lived as long as we have without getting slammed by something thats gonna wipe us out.

I am sure its a con, that we are not protected. I am sure the ptb already have weapon systems to deal with it. All the money they steal to do black projects.

I would not take any heed of this story.

It always makes me chuckle when "There's absolutely no Planet X" NASA drop the ball and admit that nope, we didn't have a notion that was there, we missed it completely.

Yeah I am sure this sort of thing happens more than we care to know. Just think about the reaction breaking news like this would have got if it was published 3 days ago.

"Large Asteroid headed towards South Eastern Hemisphere"

These boards would have lit up and everyone would take the day off work. Whoever was tracking it probably noticed that it wasnt big enough to cause a problem and quickly weighed the risk/reward ratio of notifying the public and opted against it. I think that was a good call.

[edit on 27-10-2009 by underduck]

Thanks for the replies folks.
I wonder if an event like this but bigger maybe caused the Tunguska incident back in 1908?



Although I do like the "exploding UFO" theory myself.

People tend to believe that there is a team of scientists on constant lookout for asteroids that could collide with earth. The fact is that only a tiny fraction of the sky is being watched at any one time.

Just a couple of months ago a comet hit Saturn and nobody saw it coming. It was a complete surprise.
www.dailymail.co.uk...

When the big one hits we will not have much advance notice.

This happens all the time. If you monitor the Harvard's NEO page at the Minor Planet Center they frequently report objects being discovered after they've passed us and are moving away. And many of the objects are significantly larger than 10m across. It may not make you fell all warm and fuzzy but this is very, very common. As was pointed out, smaller, relatively close-in objects are difficult to detect and there are very limited resources doing NEO work.

reply to post by Erasurehead


How do you know that there are not loads of people not looking out there. Did someone not say once, that half our sats point outwards, for some reason. Was it stanton Friedman?

I am sure there is some group somewhere doing what you think, they are not doing.

I would not worry about it.

All the money they spend on black projects, you cannot tell me they never thought to protect the earth. I think its protected already.

Rougue Nations
Terrorists
Asteroids
And then Aliens=Weapons in space.

Who was that lady that said this?

Originally posted by andy1033
reply to post by Erasurehead

 

How do you know that there are not loads of people not looking out there. Did someone not say once, that half our sats point outwards, for some reason. Was it stanton Friedman?

I am sure there is some group somewhere doing what you think, they are not doing.

I would not worry about it.

All the money they spend on black projects, you cannot tell me they never thought to protect the earth. I think its protected already.

You can keep thinking that if it makes you feel better.

There is not enough funding or people available to watch the entire sky for potential collisions. Another thing is that there really isn't anything they could do about it anyway. There currently is no plan for dealing with a planet killing impact.

reply to post by projectvxn


That "lady" was werner von braun,I believe

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
Had the asteroid been a little bit bigger,this could have been catastropic,the story goes on to say.

A little bigger? No...

Earth's atmosphere is quite capable of absorbing the impacts of large asteroids. It takes a really big asteroid to make it to the ground and potentially cause serious damage.

Perhaps if it was double the diameter (around 10x the mass of this one?) it might have made it down to the ground with some portion of it's cosmic velocity intact. Many will just explode high in the atmosphere relatively harmlessly (like this one did) due to the forces involved during atmospheric entry.

The energy released can be comparable to that delivered by a nuclear weapon in such an event, and with really big objects, it can cause damage on the ground, much like the blast in Tunguska in 1908 which was thought to have been caused by a fragment of a comet.

Also, the chances of something big hitting a populated area are still very low. Two thirds of our planet is ocean, and something like 80% of the remaining land surface is basically remote, and uninhabited.

As for those saying we should have spotted it before hand or we did have the capability, you have been watching too much Star Trek NG... we cant just "order a scan of the entire quadrant"!

Our solar system is huge, and even the larger/more dangerous objects are tiny in comparison. On average, most asteroids are darker than coal, so they are extremely dim and hard to detect optically. Right now optical detection is the only way we can find NEOs, and even when these pass by relatively close to us they are so dim that they are 10's if not 100's or times dimmer than the unaided eye can detect under the most pristine and unpolluted skies.

Most of these objects are kicked out of the asteroid belt, where there are potentially millions of rocks capable of destroying earth as we know it. We can't even resolve objects of this size (1 km +) that reside there, and yet people expect us to know of the existance of every tiny 10m asteroid. Well, you're living in cloud cuckoo land if that's what you think.

Asteroids have been hitting Earth since it was formed, and will continue to do so no matter what we do, at least until we learn to mitigate the threat, which is still a long way off.

It's not even been a year since the first recorded observation of an asteroid before it entered our atmosphere was made. I think we have to learn to crawl first, before we can walk, let alone run.

[edit on 27-10-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
reply to post by projectvxn

 

That "lady" was werner von braun,I believe

The poster meant werner von braun assistant. It was on disclosure videos, where she spoke of it.

I still say we have weapons already that can destroy asteroids, even if they where big enough to come through atmosphere.

I think there is plenty of different weapons out there, we never hear of.

If it was made of iron, the story would have been a lot different.

The Arizona crater was made by a 150 ft. chunk of iron. So it would have put a 1/5 scale hole in the ground. Meteor crater is about 1200 ft. in diameter and about 570 ft. deep. So it would have made a 240 ft. wide crater that would have been 114 ft. deep. That would still be pretty impressive. So depending on the ground of the impact zone, you would have a hole roughly the size of a modern stadium or a little less.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.

op by C.H.U.DA little bigger? No...

Earth's atmosphere is quite capable of absorbing the impacts of large asteroids. It takes a really big asteroid to make it to the ground and potentially cause serious damage.

Perhaps of it was double the diameter (around 10x the mass of this one?) it might have made it down to the ground with some portion of it's cosmic velocity intact. Many will just explode high in the atmosphere relatively harmlessly (like this one did) due to the forces involved during atmospheric entry.

Well thats good to hear.I imagine asteroids of the size you describe may be easier to spot,and hopefully we will be able to do something about them in the not too distant future.

reply to post by andy1033

The poster meant werner von braun assistant. It was on disclosure videos, where she spoke of it.

I realised that after I posted...But Projectvxns comment gave me a proper chuckle,as I pictured Von Braun hard at work in Peenemunde wearing a dress and wig.

Thanx Projectvxn,that was a cracker.

Originally posted by gerg357
s+f nice post. It does make ya wonder. I have wondered how we have lived as long as we have without getting slammed by something thats gonna wipe us out.

I think most of the really big stuff gets pulled into the gravity fields of the larger planets in the outer solar system. Our atmosphere does a pretty good job of protecting us from the smaller stuff, of course sometimes stuff gets through. I think we're in a pretty good location here. Life probably only flourishes on planets that aren't smashed into regularly...

reply to post by CAPT PROTON


You bring up a good point, but if you look at the evidence left by past impacts in recent history, lumps of iron that big are relatively rare. Rare enough that they only hit us on a time-scale of the order of tens of thousands of years, so although we could in theory be hit by something that big (and hard) tomorrow, realistically the chance of it happening in our lifetimes is quite small. There's probably more chance of someone winning the lottery 5 weeks in a row, with the same numbers.

As 27jd says, the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn sweep up many of the dangerous objects that might otherwise hit us. Without them we would probably be pummeled!

In fact, he is also spot on with what he said about this being about the right level of "bombardment". We actually need some objects to hit us, and we would not be here today because of it if we had not been hit in the past. It is thought that most of our water came from comets.

For life to start (if it did indeed start here), it turns out you need not too many, and not too few impacts.


reply to post by Silcone Synapse


Yes, in general, the larger it is, the easier it is to spot. However, it's very hard to continue to monitor all of the sky all of the time.

Right now we can only do it bit by bit, and there are blind spots due to not enough resources in the southern hemisphere as well as the part of the sky that the sun is in at any given time.

It's very hard to spot even large objects if they happen to approach you from the direction of the sun. For that we need space based platforms dedicated to watching for objects 24/7.

We also need to figure out the best way to deal with something if we do spot on heading in our direction. There are lots of good ideas, but nothing has been tested, and until it is we do not know what potential flaws there may be.

Trying to use weapons against it could potentially make things worse... even if we did have some kind of space-based weapons as some are suggesting here. It's not quite as simple as just sending Bruce Willis in to "nuke it".

Stuff like this is not worth worrying about IMHO due to the low probabilities involved. It's mostly all bark and no bite, so just enjoy the fireworks if you are lucky enough to see them or even feel/hear them!

Does anyone else think its strange we have a near earth asteroid collission in the same 24hrs we had massive earthquakes rock the planet?

07-OCT-2009 23:13:49 -13.15 166.30 6.4 33.3 VANUATU ISLANDS
07-OCT-2009 22:18:43 -13.68 164.71 7.3 35.0 VANUATU ISLANDS REGION
07-OCT-2009 22:18:37 -12.76 164.78 6.7 36.0 SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS REGION
07-OCT-2009 22:18:26 -12.55 166.32 7.7 35.0 SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS
07-OCT-2009 22:03:15 -13.05 166.19 7.8 35.0 VANUATU ISLANDS
07-OCT-2009 21:41:14 4.04 122.58 6.1 582.8 CELEBES SEA