Doomsday paranoia triggers private asteroid hunt

Published time: December 23, 2012 03:21
Edited time: December 23, 2012 09:40
Doomsday paranoia triggers private asteroid hunt

The Mayan doomsday may have passed without incident, but it's too early to relax. Astronomers have found a large asteroid heading this way. However one private firm thinks it knows how to save us.

­Scientists from the University of Hawaii said that the 140 meter asteroid's will just miss Earth as the orbital trajectory of the 2011 AG5 space object will bring it within 890,000 kilometers of our planet. That’s about twice as far away as the moon.

But we could still be in for a nasty surprise in 2040, if the path of the asteroid should change due to something called the Yarkovsky effect.

The effect is produced as asteroids or meteoroids absorb energy from the sun and re-radiate it into space as heat. This could slightly alter the space object’s trajectory.

To put it in perspective, comparable chunk of rock hit an unpopulated are in Siberia in 1908 producing energy equivalent to 1,000 times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

To avoid catastrophe, a Californian based company is cataloguing 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids to warn of and possibly deflect any threats.

The B612 Foundation has partnered with Boulder, Colorado based Ball Aerospace to come up with a $500 million infrared space telescope capable of discovering these celestial bullets. The mission is called the Sentinel.

Changing an asteroid’s trajectory is possible given enough time, Ed Lu, head of B612 Foundation, has told the NY Times. But the problem lies in the fact that scientists are only aware of a fraction of cosmic objects that could destroy the Earth.

“We're driving around the solar system with our eyes closed, essentially, and that seems kind of crazy, right?" Lu said. "Because these things do hit the Earth.”

The venture has developed a monitoring spacecraft the size of a small truck that has passed a preliminary technical review, which it hopes to launch on a SpaceX rocket by 2018.

The idea behind the Sentinel is to create a Venus-like orbit around the sun, constantly taking pictures as it explores the sky.

The founders predict the telescope will capture 10,000 asteroids a month which is the number that has been catalogued so far. The mission will last at least five-and-a-half years.

Comments (24)

chavista 30.01.2013 07:43

Mermaids have sonic weapons.. (unregistered) wrote in #20
Tesla Physics (unregistered) wrote in #19
The explosion in the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908 was blamed on an asteroid as it could not be disproven at the time, and thus covered up the nature of the event. Nicola Tesla, financially backed by J.P. Morgan, who was closely tied to the Rothschilds, had developed his "free energy" machine with which he said he could develop enough force to "split the earth in half" if taken far enough. Since the free energy physics of Tesla was proven to be weaponizable in the Tunguska explosion (Russian czars were the enemy of the Rothschilds, so their country was the target for the test), it now had to be covered up and hidden from others. Enter Albert Einstein and his somewhat different physics that sort of works up to a point. Transfer of information through space has already been proven to be possible beyond the speed of light, and those in the know are aware of the great hoax that Einstein's physics really is. During WWII, Nazi scientists were working on something similar to what Tesla had previously discovered, but could not finish the work before the war ended. Over 60 scientists were killed by the SS in order to keep the secret, and the program was moved outside Germany. The country that is leading the way in the many, many past scientific experiments of Nazi Germany is obviously the USA. Like the Nazis knew, it was discovered by those who studied their scientific advancements at the end of the war that technology had been much higher in High Antiquity (before current recorded history) than it is today. An ancient race on earth, or that controlled the earth and its people, almost certainly knew of the physics that Nicola Tesla rediscovered. Many ancient mythologies tell of a great war in which a planet was exploded. It is now known that the asteroid belt is the remains of an exploded planet. A spacecraft is currently underway to explore the asteroid belt. Since the energy to explode planets has been rediscovered, if not yet public knowledge, then you can be fairly certain that those truly in charge have the ability to split an asteroid that would threaten their existence.
Yo u should write a childrens book as this is so good.....

0

Undo

Bry (unregistered) 05.01.2013 04:07

Well.... The truth be told from the most unlikely sources..Even if not readily accepted as possible..Having a guess is far from accurate..Yet we the people of earth are in flux over units from several authors in the Bible and the Koran yet they both have common information which is all too readily disputed by both believers either side of each book..Yet from within Syria lays a great majority of the answers..What is wrong in wanting to find answers to questions as in the eyes and minds of a children.. We can achieve so much by being  united as a people of this planet..As will find out for certain in the not too distant future..We on earth are not the only creatures in the cosmos

+1

Undo

Internaut 28.12.2012 01:43

Nik (unregistered) wrote in #6
Its 'metre', not 'meter'. Learn English.
Ahh - but they don't speak English - they speak US.

0

Undo

View all comments (24)
Add comment

By posting your comment, you agree to abide by our Posting rules

Log in to comment in full, or comment anonymously under character-limit restriction.

100 Text

– required fields

Register or

Name

Password

Show password

Register

or Register

Request a new password

Send

or Register

To complete a registration check
your Email:

or Register

A password has been sent to your email address

Edit profile

Name

New password

Retype new password

Current password

Save

Cancel

Follow us