100-foot diameter asteroid will pass within 26,500 miles of Earth tonight, the closest ever brush on record by a space rock, so says NASA: 5:08PM Eastern Time - Southern Atlantic Ocean http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040318/ap_on_sc/asteroid_flyby
Thank God for Senator Barbara Mikulski who refused to take no for an answer in regards to NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe's decision to let the Hubble "expire". http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mikulski_hubble_040122.html As shown on last week's episode of "60-Minutes" the Hubble has taught us that all of our preconcieved notions about "gravity" pulling the Universe back towards the "center" are wrong. In fact, the Hubble has shown us that the Universe is actually "accelerating-away" from us. Unreal stuff. Forget about going to Mars, George Bush. Let's fix the Hubble!
That's the whole point in dumping Hubble. There isn't enough money in it anymore. Only a $100million or so for refurbishing. They only like the really juicy jobs at NASA. On top of that, too many people looking over their shoulder with Hubble. Nobody knows about Mars and beyond. Any crazy story will sell. As a footnote: it's also remarkable that today's fly-by rock got spotted only on Monday. Worse, in spite of all the NASA hullabaloo, it's the same story as with Sedna. No NASA hardware involved. Only earthly astronomers "sponsored" by NASA. What the heck do we need NASA for? Can't Congress sponsor deserving observatories? In fact, without taxpayer's money they might even have spotted those rocks earlier. Don't forget, way back in 1930 they even found Pluto without NASA and government gravy. One of their Twits went on record saying about the fly-by rock: "The important thing is not that it's happening, but that we detected it." Thus the Twit was: (1) surprised by the fact that it got detected at all; (2) didn't care the least bit about the thing hitting the Earth, undedected by NASA. nononsense
Don't ya'll wonder what the Reall Imminent Threats are?????? Where and how are we spending taxpayer's money???:eek: :eek: sheeeeshhhh
The one in 1908 .... we should be getting one of those every 100 years or so .... only a matter of time ...
Hi Nolan, Don't let any sleep for it. Those NASA fellas are working on a catalog which, they say, should be finished by about 2008. (The ones not in the catalog by that time will be looked after by amateur astronomers. This is nononsense's own addition to the project). They also would continue working on an atom bomblet solution (1000 or so) that should make it possible to deviate a "bad rock" from a collission trajectory. Of course, they will only do so provided we pay the (astronomical) bill. (Picked up in the press recently)
wouldn't worry about it. Harrytrader is bundling a few thou more lines of XML into his system to cope with asteroid impacts. The day after it hits, he'll be able to tell ya where it came from.