'Beast' Asteroid Passes Earth in a Cosmic Near Miss

CBNNews.com
Sunday, June 08, 2014





An asteroid nicknamed "The Beast" passed by the earth Sunday, and while there was "zero chance" it would hit, the asteroid's trajectory barely missed the planet.

The asteroid passed 777,000 miles from Earth at its closest point, making it a fairly close miss.

Its official name is Asteroid 2014 HQ124, and it is more than 1100 feet wide, a piece of rock that would cause quite a bit of damage if it were to hit.

Asteroid expert Mark Boslough of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico said, "This one would definitely be catastrophic if it hit the Earth."

He added, "If it hit a city, it would definitely wipe out an entire metropolitan area."

The asteroid was discovered in April by a NASA space telescope. NASA compared its size to a bus, while another scientist compared its dimensions to a movie theater.

Despite scientists' assurances that The Beast won't hit us, it has been designated as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid.


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Pat Robertson: Asteroid could destroy Earth as soon as next week

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By Kolten Parker : April 22, 2014 : Updated: April 22, 2014 2:02pm




Photo By Michael Smith/Getty Images
Christian Coalition President Pat Robertson appears on NBC's "Meet the Press" May 7, 2000 in Washington, DC.

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SAN ANTONIO — Megachurch pastors Pat Robertson and John Hagee walk into a bar ... and a devastating astronomical event occurs and the world is destroyed.

Not to be outdone by the blood moon theory pushed by Hagee, a world-famous preacher from San Antonio, Robertson has crafted another “end of the age” theory that involves an asteroid, or, as he calls it, “a big ol' hunk of space rock” destroying the Earth, which he said could happen as soon as next week.

“I don't see anything else that fulfills the prophetic words of Jesus Christ other than an asteroid strike,” said Robertson on The 700 Club television broadcast Monday. “There isn't anything else that will cause the seas to roil, the skies to darken…”

Robertson was plugging his book “The End of the Age,” which asserts a meteor will destroy the Earth, on the Christian Broadcasting Network. The 1988 presidential candidate, who has predicted the world would come to an end multiple times, was piggy backing off of news that NASA would release information Tuesday that asteroids have struck the world much more than previously thought.

The B612 Foundation released data Tuesday reported that 26 explosions attributed to incoming asteroids have occurred near Earth, none of which were detected. Each of the 26 explosions gave about an equivalent of the detonation of 1 kiloton or more of TNT, according to NBC News.

The largest blast, which occurred in Russia in 2013 and injured 1,200 people, roughly was equal to 600 kilotons. The nuclear blast that devastated Hiroshima in 1945 was 12 kilotons, according to NBC.

“So, hey, just get ready,” Roberston said. “Get right. And stay right with the Lord… It could be next week, it could be 1,000 years from now. But nevertheless, we want to be ready whenever the Lord says, 'I'm wrapping it up, and it's time to come home.' ”

Hagee, who also is pushing sales of his book, predicts that a “world-shaking event” would occur within the next year. Hagee, founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio said last week that the four total eclipses, also known as blood moons for the red color, indicate that a history-changing event soon will occur.

The first of the four blood moons occurred April 15.

The Cornerstone Church, located near Stone Oak on the North Side of San Antonio, has about 20,000 active members, according to its website.

kparker@express-news.net

Twitter: @KoltenParker


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Monster asteroid whizzes past Earth a year after Russia explosion

17/02 10:34 CET

A gigantic asteroid has whizzed ‘close’ to Earth – around a year after another exploded over Russia, injuring hundreds of people.

The space rock, which measured around 270-metres (885 ft) wide, raced past the planet at about 27,000mph (43,000kph) around 3am CET on Tuesday.

The asteroid came within about 1.6 million miles (2.6m km) of Earth.

On February 15, 2013, a smaller asteroid, around 20m (65ft) in diameter, hit Earth over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Its massive impact shattered windows and damaged buildings, with the flying glass injuring around 1,200 people.




A specialist robotic telescope service, which had hoped to capture pictures of Tuesday’s asteroid, failed to operate. The telescope, based at an observatory in the Canary Islands, broadcasts footage on slooh.com. But the equipment froze over, meaning the asteroid could not be captured.

Paul Cox, Slooh’s technical and research director, said: “We continue to discover these potentially hazardous asteroids – sometimes only days before they make their close approaches to Earth.
He added: “We need to find them before they find us!”




Copyright © 2014 euronews

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Asteroid headed toward Earth? 'Pray,' NASA advises

By Clara Moskowitz

Published March 20, 2013

Space.com

Meteor Trail Over Russia: Feb. 15 (Russian Emergency Ministry)

In the wake of last month's meteor strike in Russia and a close asteroid flyby on the same day, members of Congress asked NASA, White House and Air Force officials what they're doing to combat the threat of near-Earth asteroids during a hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

"The answer to you is, 'if it's coming in three weeks, pray,'" space agency chief Charles Bolden said, in response to Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), who asked what NASA would do if a large asteroid headed on a collision course with Earth was discovered today with only three weeks before impact.

"The reason I can't do anything in the next three weeks is because for decades we have put it off."

'If it's coming in three weeks, pray. I can't do anything in the next three weeks because for decades we've put it off.'

- NASA chief Charles Bolden, when asked what to do if a large asteroid headed on a collision course with Earth were discovered today

By and large, the experts stressed that the two space rock events were a coincidence and that the chance of a catastrophic asteroid impact to Earth any time soon is remote. On Feb. 15, a surprise meteor exploded in the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains, just hours before the 150-foot-wide asteroid 2012 DA14 flew close by Earth in a pass that had been predicted beforehand by scientists.

"The odds of a near-Earth object strike causing massive causalities and destruction of infrastructure are very small, but the potential consequences of such an event are so large that it makes sense to take the risk seriously," John Holdren, science advisor to President Barack Obama, told the Science, Space and Technology Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Still, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, said it was "not reassuring" to learn that NASA has so far detected only about 10 percent of the near-Earth objects that are wider than 87 miles across. Holdren estimated that there may be hundreds of thousands of such objects within one-third the distance from Earth to the sun that remain unknown. [Meteor Streaks Over Russia, Explodes (Photos)]

In 2005, Congress directed NASA to detect, track and characterize 90 percent of these space rocks —those near-Earth asteroids larger than 87 miles. Bolden said today that NASA was unlikely to meet that deadline given its current budget.

"Our estimate right now is at the present budget levels it will be 2030 before we're able to reach the 90 percent level as prescribed by Congress," Bolden said.

Bolden criticized the lawmakers for slowing NASA down through budget cuts. "You all told us to do something, and between the administration and the Congress, the bottom line is the funding did not come," Bolden said.

Furthermore, he said the goal of finding a way to respond to asteroid threats has been repeatedly put off by lawmakers who cite a lack of money.

Budget concerns also hamper the military's ability to monitor near-Earth objects and other space threats, such as orbital debris (defunct satellites and spent rocket stages that litter Earth orbit).

"We are clearly less capable under sequestration," Gen. William Shelton, the current commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command, told the committee. He said that any further budget cuts could have dire consequences.

"Our dependence on space, not only for our way of life but also for military operations, is very high, so we would sacrifice that," Shelton said.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/20/asteroid-threat-earthly-budgets/#ixzz2O79ZKTrw

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Florida fireballs renew calls for early warning system (+video)

Florida fireballs lit up the night sky Sunday. The fireballs (aka meteors) were seen by more than 60 people in Florida. Coming after the huge meteor in Russia, there are new calls for an early warning system to protect the Earth from giant meteors and asteroids.

By Staff, CSMonitor.com / February 20, 2013

More meteor sightings in Fla. and Cal. 

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=69016&sitesection=csmonitor&VID=24435086

A fireball, caused by a falling meteor, was seen by spectators from Miami to Jacksonville, Florida, Sunday evening.

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The streaking meteor was small compared to the one that hit Russia last week, but it was a bright light in the Florida sky – and was captured on video.

“This one wasn’t grain-of-sand size, which what most of them are,” Thomas Webber, director of the Museum of Science and History’s Bryan-Gooding Planetarium toldthe Florida Times Union in Jacksonville. “When we get something a little bigger, that maybe has a silicate coating that ablates off as it travels though the atmosphere and takes some of the heat with it, they can appear much brighter and last a lot longer.”

More than 60 people reported seeing the meteor on the American Meteor Society’s “Fireball Log.”

They posted comments including, "I saw flames coming from it as it was falling and then it burned out. It was very distintive as a flaming, falling ball."

The Florida fireball, coming on the heels of the huge meteor that fell in Russia last week and an asteroid that buzzed past the Earth from a distance of just 17,200 miles, is raising awareness of how many objects fall to Earth each day.

The American Meteor Society notes that hundreds, if not thousands, of meteors fall to Earth daily. Most burn up in the atmosphere. But larger meteors, or asteroids, could pose a threat to life on Earth. Recent events have renewed calls for an early warning system, including a telescope in space dedicated to finding asteroids. As The Christian Science Monitor reported recently:

"In their hunt to identify such near-Earth objects wider than half a mile across – potential civilization busters if one were to strike Earth – astronomers have cataloged about 95 percent of the objects in this size class during the past 15 years.

But they have found less than 1 percent of the objects 100 feet across or larger, a class that includes the asteroid 2012 DA14. This object flitted past Earth Friday afternoon Eastern Standard Time a scant 17,200 miles from Earth – a record for a known object of its size."

On Friday, Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee and chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, issued a statement regarding the two events that noted that the committee will hold hearings in the near future to explore ways to improve efforts to detect asteroids as well as to deal with any deemed a potential threat to the planet.

Discussing the recent asteroid flyby and the Russian meteor, Prof. Michio Kaku of City College of New York, told CBS News: "This could be a game changer," in terms of getting government support for better tracking of these objects. "We need an insurance policy. Inevitably, we're going to get hit with a big one. Look at the moon: it's pockmarked ... so we need to have an early warning system."

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End Times Asteroid Meteor Shower in Russia ? Loud EXPLOSION Взрыв Че

End Times Asteroid Meteor Shower in Russia ? Loud EXPLOSION Взрыв Челябинск

nijamhit

Published on Feb 14, 2013


End Times Asteroid Meteor Shower in Russia ? Loud EXPLOSION Взрыв Челябинск

A powerful blast rocked the Russian region of the Urals early on Friday with bright objects, identified as possible meteorites, falling from the sky, emergency officials said.

"It was definitely not a plane," an emergency official told Reuters, without elaborating. "We are gathering the bits of information and have no data on the casualties so far."

No one was hurt in a meteor shower, an emergency official told RIA-Novosti. Local residents said they witnessed burning objects in the sky of the Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions.

A Reuters witness in Chelyabinsk reported hearing a huge blast early in the morning and feeling a shockwave in a 19-storey building in the town center.

The sounds of car alarms and breaking windows could be heard in the area, the witness said, and mobile phones were working intermittently.

"Preliminary indications are that it was a meteorite rain," an emergency official told RIA-Novosti. "We have information about a blast at 10,000-meter (32,800-foot) altitude. It is being verified."

The trace from a falling object could be seen in Yekaterinburg, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Chelyabinsk, another Reuters witness said.

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Asteroid to pass close to Earth today

November 8, 2011 | 11:19 am

A 1,300-foot-wide asteroid hurtling through space will make its closest approach to Earth Tuesday at 3:28 p.m. PST, whizzing inside the moon’s orbit but not close enough to endanger the planet, according to NASA officials.

The giant space rock is being tracked by a team of NASA scientists at the Deep Space Network antenna in the Mojave Desert outside of Barstow, as well as the Arecibo Planetary Radar Facility in Puerto Rico.

The asteroid, named 2005 YU55, will come no closer than 201,000 miles to Earth, the nearest an asteroid this big has come to the planet since 1976.

It will not be visible to the naked eye, but professional and amateur astronomers may be able to see it with a telescope.

The flyby allowed scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to blast the rock with a beam of microwaves, revealing its ridges, craters and boulders to a radio telescope and providing enough information about its speed and trajectory to allow JPL officials to plot its course for the next 64 years.

Lance Benner, JPL's lead scientist on the project, said the data show that the asteroid will have another close encounter with Earth in 2075, and skim close to Venus in 2029.

"There's no risk of it hitting us, but we've got to continue to monitor it,'' Benner told reporters at the Mojave Desert site on Monday.

The close proximity gives researchers a rare opportunity to study the physical characteristics of an asteroid, adding to the understanding of bodies floating in space and offering a glimpse, perhaps, of the forces that created the universe, Benner said.

NASA has identified more than 8,000 "near-Earth" asteroids, including more than 400 that are at least a half-mile wide. Thus far, none of them is classified as a threat.

The public can follow events via the @AsteroidWatch or at the JPL website.

...

--Phil Willon

Photo: Gary Bury, left, and Robert Haroldsson of the Deep Space Network discuss the giant 230-foot wide antenna that is tracking an asteroid that is larger than an aircraft carrier as it hurls past earth Monday at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Center at Fort Irwin. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

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Asteroid hits Earth Animation

scottschreck88 August 03, 2007