An Asteroid Exploded Over Indonesia With the Force of Three Hiroshima-Size Nuclear Bombs This Month... No One Saw It Coming

Youtube video shows trail.

Well it is a BIG ASS SKY. what do you expect? can't possibly watch it all with the spending going to other areas that is deemed to be more important...

Well it is a BIG ASS SKY. what do you expect? can't possibly watch it all with the spending going to other areas that is deemed to be more important...

Oh good Christ...wah wah wah. Even WITH the cash, you can't watch the entire sky.

I've pretty much always thought if it isn't a nuclear bomb, then it's going to be an asteroid. Can't win!

1.3

AT what point did I say we could watch the whole DAMN sky? Oh yeah I DIDN"T! Stop the ASSUMING. read the post for what it says nothing more or less

WAH WAH WAH childish

Interesting seed. Clipped to Odd News Group.

Kill

Yeppers! Here is a link to a foundation that wants to do something about this.

http://www.b612foundation.org/

A good friend of mine is Brian Marsden, who just retired from the Minor Planet Center. After the asteroid scares of about 15 years ago, we started calling him "Dr. Death". He got a kick out of it.

Yes, another great catch, Kill.

Good seed, if this story doesn't scare the livin $#&! out of you, I don't know what will.

Here is a news video from Indonesia on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeQBzTkJNhs&feature=player_embedded#

a giant meteor would be pretty quick and painless (right?).. on the other hand.. THIS does scare the living crap outta me! imagine going to sleep in your nice comfy bed and then waking with a damn car on top of you!

killfile, good seed!

Um yeah but comparing something that is in the solar system, and not on earth such as trees and cars doesn't really work all that well.

You are basically trying to say let's move Earth out of the asteroid path. If you can do that, heck go for it.

We're constantly under threat and scientists have predicted so many different years from 2014 all the way up to 2880.

We're supposedly going to have a collision March 14, 2014 by 2003 QQ47, which was discovered in August 24, 2003. 2002 NT7 was supposed to hit in 2019, but that has been cleared.

Actually, we don’t have to push it sideways enough to avoid Earth’s orbit. All we really have to do is speed up or slow down one of the two objects- Earth or the asteroid. Since we obviously do not want to alter Earth’s orbit around the sun, and because Earth will be orders of magnitude larger, we’d chose to alter the asteroid’s speed. If we sped up or slowed down the asteroid, its trajectory may still intersect Earth’s orbit. However, it will do so when the Earth is at a different location in its orbit, and thus avoid collision. I suppose either method would work though! Of course then we'd have to figure out a way to attach literally thousands of rockets to a planetary body, moving millions of miles per hour, and take into consideration of shifts in gravity, the speed of both objects and hope nothing goes wrong along the way..which is improbable. As Kshark pointed out, the trjectory of the planetary body would constantly be changing so predicting it's [ath would be "iffy" But I'm sure we'd try!

spot it a few years out (if we took the time and energy to look).

And money --

"A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars."

"If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes.

I can't even imagine how difficult it is to spot an asteroid in the solar system.

It would be like trying find a spare key that might exist in a house as big the pacific ocean.

Hell, I can't find my keys have the time in my house as it is...even when they are in front of my face.

You are basically trying to say let's move Earth out of the asteroid path. If you can do that, heck go for it.

No, we are not.

I can't even imagine how difficult it is to spot an asteroid in the solar system.

We do it all the time. Google LINEAR telescope, the "Minor Planet Center" to get more information.

I can't even imagine how difficult it is to spot an asteroid in the solar system.

We do it all the time. Google LINEAR telescope, the "Minor Planet Center" to get more information.

Oh, I know we find asteroid all the time. I find my kids toys laying on the floor that they never seem to see.

However, I am saying in the vastness of space, do we know what we are not finding?

Killfile--

Well if you have the money to roll out as clearly no one else does, and since we have a crap load more problems on earth, so I appoint you to fund and pay for and build whatever is possible to find and blast away asteroids.

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mojo31979--

LOL We would have a LOT more problems than just an asteroid.

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Ah well might as well start talking about all of this now and put everyone in true panic mode and paranoia.

"Don't wanna close my eyyyeess...Don't wanna fall asleeepp!"

All we need are Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis in a rocket and some dynamite.

Apparently, the element upsidasium falls upward away from Earth whenever it is mined. I say we mine all we can and make warheads we can shoot at these meteorites. It will also be a boon the the economy of Frostbite Falls.

sorry, multiple futurama references with a bit o' final fantasy x thrown in to boot... ; )

http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/

"Potentially Hazardous asteroids (PHAs) are larger than ~0.2 km (0.1 mile) and approach close enough to present a potential hazard but not a current hazard. "

So that was much smaller than they consider hazardous, by my reading.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/

"In 1998 NASA commenced its part of the "Spaceguard" effort, with the goal of discovering and tracking over 90% of the near-Earth objects larger than one kilometer by the end of 2008."

Asteroid False Alarm Shows Limits of Alert Systems- March 8, 2004

The scare was the latest in a series of false alarms that highlights the apparent lack of procedure for dealing with a possible asteroid threat. Several astronomers complained they did not know whom to call in an emergency.

Last Tuesday, Lindley Johnson, a program scientist at NASA's Near-Earth Object Observation Program in Washington, D.C., sent a memo to a select group of asteroid experts. Should a potential impactor be detected, Johnson wrote, "You call me."

Very well. But what happens next? There is no government agency assigned to "protect the Earth." In theory, if Johnson's office is warned of an asteroid threat, the office would pass it along the chain of command to the NASA administrator, who would contact the President.

Asteroid "Near" Miss: False Alarm or Wake Up Call?

...
Let me paraphrase a leading astronomical group's position paper on the potential threat of an asteroid impact: What greater feat could there be than to perhaps someday alter the course of an asteroid to prevent an impending disaster? And what greater tragedy, given our knowledge and abilities, than to be caught unprepared?

So that was much smaller than they consider hazardous, by my reading.

Just remember that the big hole in Arizona (meteor crater), was caused by an object 28-32 meters in diameter.

The PHA designation is for one that will wipe out civilization. One the size that hit arizona would make for a very bad day in any city of the world.

Google the "Torino Scale" for asteroid impactors.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/torino_scale.html

Thanks space_guy

This says 50 meters, but either way that's still much smaller than 0.1 mile, so your point remains.

http://www.americansouthwest.net/arizona/meteor_crater/index.html
Current theories place the size of the meteor as 150 feet in diameter, and its weight at 300,000 tons.

Cletus

The size keeps changing all the time. I am going on what the folks that model the impacts tell me. Google "Jay Melosh, Meteor Crater, or Elizabetta Pizzario" as they did a study on the impact and have more recent data.

It doesn't matter in this discussion, it's down in the noise.

Excellent example.

That's because it isn't a human interest story. I imagine there are other reasons as well--such as the fact that it was Indonesia and not New York City. And don't forget that the mainstream media stay away from any story that can't be done "in depth" in about thirty seconds. Just witness all the confusion above over what could be done to divert an asteroid. What! You mean we don't have to wait until the asteroid has a magnificent view of the Earth before we send Bruce Willis and company there to blow the beejeezuz out of it?! Probably when an impending asteroid is newsworthy, we'll be hearing about it from the bottom of five-mile crater rapidly filling up with a tsunami.

Well said! Too funny.

On October 8, 2009 about 03:00 Greenwich time, an atmospheric fireball blast was observed and recorded over an island region of Indonesia. The blast is thought to be due to the atmospheric entry of a small asteroid about 10 meters in diameter that, due to atmospheric pressure, detonated in the atmosphere with an energy of about 50 kilotons (the equivalent of 100,000 pounds of TNT explosives).

The blast was recorded visually and reported upon by local media representatives. See the YouTube video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeQBzTkJNhs&videos=jkRJgbXY-90

Jim: If a really big one were to hit us I'm afraied there would be no way to deal with it afterwards, unless you would classify starting civilization over from scratch as dealing with it. UFOs stand by we may need you.

Would you want to know if It was going to hit? I know I would, Id rather spend my last days with my friends and family then shopping or working.

It may be terrifying but there is nothing we can do about these little rock bombs. And the Earth has been absorbing them for billions of years.

Of course there is something that we can do. We have the technology to deflect all but the very largest impactors today, we just are not spending the money to get ready.

Maybe everbody accidentaly deleted God's (him or her) e-mail because everbody thought it was spam or some scam. Who knows?

Ah, there was a note tied to the rock God threw at us.

We would have been able to read it before it disintegrated if only we had bothered to develop a telescope that would have seen it.

Our bad.