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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsStadium-sized asteroid heading to Earth this week
ST. LOUIS NASA is keeping tabs on a massive asteroid thats coming closer to Earth each day. The space agency has an asteroid watch section of its website showing the next 5 approaches, which are all in the next few days.
The largest is estimated to be 1,100 feet wide, approximately the size of a football stadium. That one, named 2002 NN4, would come the closest to Earth on June 6. However, scientists dont expect there to be a collision on Earth. Its closest approach will be 3,160,000 miles from Earth.
There are three others the size of a plane and one the size of a house also making their way to earth over the next few days. Scientists also dont believe there are any concerns from those asteroids either. The closest one is expected to come within 1,830,000 miles of earth later today.
https://wgno.com/news/stadium-sized-asteroid-heading-to-earth-this-week/?taid=5ed841b74b7b8500011e96f3&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
Squinch
(50,949 posts)Maru Kitteh
(28,340 posts)Initech
(100,070 posts)Where somewhere, something went horribly, horribly wrong and we're stuck in a nightmare reality that is nothing like the reality we should be living in. Now to go invent the Flux Capacitor...
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Maybe this year will finally be the End Times, hell, it's been predicted enough for past years.
lindysalsagal
(20,682 posts)Saw it on bookface
flying rabbit
(4,632 posts)Hekate
(90,681 posts)SiliconValley_Dem
(1,656 posts)DrToast
(6,414 posts)Let's just get this over with.
SaveOurDemocracy
(4,400 posts)onenote
(42,701 posts)To put this in perspective, the moon is 239,000 miles away.
On November 8, 2011, an asteroid that was 1,180 ft in diameter, passed within 201,700 miles of Earth.
dweller
(23,632 posts)we need A space wall, or space net or can we just attach an anchor to the Moon
to keep it there ???
✌🏼
Cirque du So-What
(25,938 posts)scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)(Thanks for useful information, Onenote.)
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)My guess. We won't know for sure unless one of those asteroids continues to approach - that would indicate that a celestial dynamic has changed.
BTW, one of MARS' moons is slowly getting closer to that planet and will eventually collide with it. I suspect that our moon, over billions of years, has gotten closer to Earth and will one day in the very distant future become an asteroid that strikes Earth. The MARS moon altitude change is noticeable because it is happening very fast in geoplanetary terms.
Sympthsical
(9,073 posts)Due to tidal forces with the oceans, the moon is moving away from us. About four centimeters per year. It could eventually stabilize or escape our orbit. But by the time thatd happen, the sun will be all done.
Our lunar buddy will be with us til the end.
Edit: when it first formed, the moon was much, much, much closer to earth. Like ten hour orbits. That mustve been hell in the oceans. The tides wouldve been daily tidal waves.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)It may be difficult to say our moon is moving away from us, it's motion can be part of a pattern that takes hundreds of thousands of years or even millions of years to fully develop - so measurements that are made are not even snapshots in time. The moon that is getting closer to MARS is doing that in real time, so that pattern is highly measurable and the end result predictable.
One thing that may be happening now with Earth can be used as an illustration of why we can't really predict what our moon is doing vis a vis distance from Earth, outside of solar driven effects on it's orbit. The magnetic field of Earth is weakening over one area on Earth, true North and true South have also shifted. One theory of what is happening is that the Earth is undergoing polar inversion, a process that takes something like around 300,000-400,000 years. If our instruments are fine enough, maybe we can detect that an inversion is happening as I write, most likely, all we will see are extremely fine but continuous changes in positional strength of the magnetosphere and changes to the poles, things that seem to be happening.
Sympthsical
(9,073 posts)Due to earths relatively fast rotation vs the moons relatively slow orbit, the water/tidal interaction wants to drag the moon faster along with it. Its a rather minor tug in the scheme of things, but it is a measurable tug. This accelerates the moon, creating a faster orbit that pushes it slightly away from us. Weve been measuring the moons distance with lasers for decades, and its been consistently 4cm per year. Its because we have so much liquid that this happens. Mars has no liquid, so its moons arent getting the acceleration. Once theyre in the Roche limit, theyre toast.
I definitely think polar inversion is in the cards for us relatively soon. Were pretty overdue for one compared to the intervals of the past.
The weakening magnetosphere is a super interesting mystery. Especially because its happening so rapidly. Ill be curious to see what theories science comes up with in the next decade to account for it. Polar inversion is a fairly slow process like you said. But its deteriorating at lightning speed at the moment. I do wonder how the sun is involved. A lot of people have been thinking we may see another Maunder Minimum this century. Maybe something to do with it?
Although we should pray for a MM. it could save our bacon a bit with global warming. Maybe buy us another century to get our mess under control.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,314 posts)in distance can be measured, by timing the reflections of laser beams off the instruments Apollo left behind.
How do scientists know? The moon's distance is measured by bouncing laser beams off reflectors on the moon's surface that astronauts from the Apollo missions left behind. Scientists can measure the time it takes for the laser beams to travel there and back and calculate the distance with a high degree of accuracy. Eventually, the moon's distance will substantially weaken the oceans' tides and total eclipses of the sun won't be possible for observers on Earth, since the moon will have moved too far away. But that could still take another billion years.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1929328_1929325_1929310,00.html
The simulations also imply that at the time of its formation, the Moon sat much closer to the Earth - a mere 22,500km (14,000 miles) away, compared with the quarter of a million miles (402,336 km) between the Earth and the Moon today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12311119
The end result for the Martian moon Phobos is that, since it's already so close, it'll get closer, and then get ripped apart by tidal forces:
They key is that the material was tossed into a high enough orbit, above whats known as the synchronous orbit. This is where the Moon completes an orbit slower than the Earth takes to rotate once. Since the Moon ended up higher than this orbit, its spiraling outward. If its orbit was less than the length of a day, it would spiral inward.
And this is what has happened to Phobos. It orbits below this synchronous orbit, where it completes an orbit around Mars faster than the planet itself turns. Its spiraling inward instead of outward.
Once Phobos gets down to an altitude of only 7000 km above the center of Mars (or 3,620 km above its surface), it will enter whats known as the Roche limit. At this point, the tidal forces of Mars will tear Phobos apart, turning it into a ring that will continue to spiral into Mars. According to Dr. Sharma, this will happen in only 7.6 million years from now.
https://www.universetoday.com/14258/phobos-might-only-have-10-million-years-to-live/
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)because the measurement is made over a inconsequential timeframe relative to galaxial or even solar system time, there is absolutely no way of saying that the motion away isn't something more than a minor hitch in a much larger and longer term movement.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,314 posts)angular momentum to the Moon, which has moved further out. This is known from fossils - see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-rotation-summer-solstice/ or https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/Grade35/6Page58.pdf . As I said, this isn't just a guess by someone; all scientists agree on it.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)out of line with how the planet firmed and changed in time. The Earth was once a rapidly spinning fireball, as it cooled, it underwent geochemical changes that affected both it's basic shape and it's spin speed, and I argue, it's revolution around the Sun.
All Astrophysicists and Astronomers once thought that stars could not grow beyond a certain mass, their simulations confirmed that conclusion. But the Hubble has found stars that are 1,000 times, or more, more massive than once thought possible.
Look, I am not some flat-Earth dumbass that blocks out facts and reason. But I do know that outside of ironclad proof (like photographic evidence showing that the Earth is essentially round with some Equatorial budge), scientific beliefs change as more information is gathered, Space Science is one of those areas where it changes fairly frequently, what was conventional wisdom that "all" scientists accepted gets way-laid by new discoveries.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,314 posts)and everyone else, it's the tidal interaction with the Moon. Geochemical changes can't alter angular momentum like that. It's physics, not chemistry.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)You will likely call upon primordial inertia. Hold that thought while you endeavor to explain the retrograde orbits of Venus and Uranus, while both still follow a linear pattern of orbit speed with distance from the Sun. I won't go into them because they are complicated, but at least they theories that I buy into explain how all of that can happen, along with why Earth's spin speed and orbit speed has changed over billions of years, it also explains why stars that are much more massive than "conventitional" scientists thought possible can exist in this Universe.
applegrove
(118,642 posts)Last edited Wed Jun 3, 2020, 11:25 PM - Edit history (1)
upheaval in the US and around the world on race, or i would be terribly upset. I am hopeful instead. A mountain has been moved.
Jamastiene
(38,187 posts)murder hornets
Lindsey Graham's new hairdo
applegrove
(118,642 posts)i can attest to the danger of species. But still i am so hopefull that the US is woke on race. And no, the magnetic north pole switching to the south is not going to change my optimism.
lordsummerisle
(4,651 posts)suggesting that the object is heading for earth. It's heading for our vicinity and will safely pass by over 3 million miles.
onenote
(42,701 posts)As asteroid encounters go its a nothing burger.
ProfessorGAC
(65,021 posts)So nearly zero gravitational effect.
Nothing burger describes it aptly.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)If they stay a certain distance away, then we will know that the passes are no issue. But if they come within a specific distance where the Earth's residual gravitational field can influence them, or the Sun's influence on them become stronger, then they could be headed for a collision with us.
I am a adherent of the theory that an un-modeled force exists in this Universe. That force keeps celestial bodies apart. It degrades in time like magnetism, once it falls below a given value, the pull of gravity from another body pulls it in for an eventual collision. There are physical elements in our solar system and Galaxy that appear to suport such a theory. For example, Venus and Uranus have retrograde orbits - the theory is that powerful collisions caused their orbits to be opposite other planets, the issue with such a theory is that it doesn't explain why Venus revolves around the Sun faster than all planets farther from the Sun than it is and why that revolutionary order follows a uniform pattern. The theory doesn't explain why Uranus revolves around the Sun slower than any planet closer to the Sun than it. But the action of a force that is dependent on distance from the Sun and inter-planetary interaction would explain the orbits of Venus and Uranus and explain why Uranus spins on it's side. In the Galaxy, stars are being created, yet they follow a predictable revolutionary path around Sag A and stay in the spiral arm that they formed in - in addition, the spiral arms stay a distance apart as they revolve around Sag A.
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,490 posts)Can Space Force modify it's arrival time to be perfectly timed with Yellowstone?
After all, America needs better and more exciting entertainment......
C_U_L8R
(45,002 posts)What the fuuuuck.
NCjack
(10,279 posts)milestogo
(16,829 posts)Renew Deal
(81,858 posts)Jamastiene
(38,187 posts)I finally got some more TP and now this.
I still haven't used my Trump stimulus autographed campaign letter yet though. So, I haven't completely been out of TP yet. I had it earmarked as a last resort.
Mickju
(1,803 posts)budkin
(6,703 posts)And put an end to the madness of humanity.
Cal Carpenter
(4,959 posts)Which meant we would get stoned and drive around listening to music. We called it that because it usually involved driving west on I-94 from the Detroit area. Heading to Chicago, lol. Never went further than Jackson or so. Teenagers. We thought we were hilarious.
Jamastiene
(38,187 posts)Wow, what a year. I won't ask what's next because I don't want to jinx us any more than we already are.
Yavin4
(35,438 posts)...into darkness...as plants started to die...as mankind faced extinction...a cry was heard.....
"BUT HER EMAILS!!!""
grantcart
(53,061 posts)Jamastiene
(38,187 posts)applegrove
(118,642 posts)GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,855 posts)My Son the Astronomer tells me that the chance of an actual impact with our planet is extremely low, according to those who actually track these things.
Here's one chart: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/
If you want to try to figure out all the math, it winds up with essentially a zero chance of any known asteroid crashing into our planet within the next several thousand years.
Meanwhile, something that is far outside the orbit of the Moon is a giant yawn.
coti
(4,612 posts)If the Earth was the size of a basketball, a little less than ten inches, this is the equivalent of something like a tiny grain of sand passing by that basketball not quite a city block away- about 500 feet.
eShirl
(18,491 posts)leftyladyfrommo
(18,868 posts)MineralMan
(146,298 posts)The closest one will be almost 2 million miles away. You won't even be able to see it with the naked eye.
Sensationalist Garbage Reporting.
Initech
(100,070 posts)Come on, 2020, what else ya got??? We can take it!