The news today has us thinking about bigger things….bigger than we can imagine at times…

The good news for now, is that Near Earth Asteroids don’t seem to be as much of a threat as they were yesterday, thanks to research from the Japanese Space Agency, and their Hayabusa probe. Even though the probe mission had problems, we learned some useful insight into the actual makings of a near 700 foot wide asteroid (it’s not as solid as we thought).

“The results were very interesting and shocking,” said Akira Fujiwara, a scientist on the Hayabusa team from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA. “To mitigate asteroid threats, it will be very useful in the future.” Fujiwara and his colleagues published their findings in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Source

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/W. Reach (SSC/Caltech)

A Million Comet Pieces
This infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the broken Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3 skimming along a trail of debris left during its multiple trips around the sun. The flame-like objects are the comet’s fragments and their tails, while the dusty comet trail is the line bridging the fragments.

Comet 73P /Schwassman-Wachmann 3 began to splinter apart in 1995 during one of its voyages around the sweltering sun. Since then, the comet has continued to disintegrate into dozens of fragments, at least 36 of which can be seen here. Astronomers believe the icy comet cracked due the thermal stress from the sun.

The Spitzer image provides the best look yet at the trail of debris left in the comet’s wake after its 1995 breakup. The observatory’s infrared eyes were able to see the dusty comet bits and pieces, which are warmed by sunlight and glow at infrared wavelengths. This comet debris ranges in size from pebbles to large boulders. When Earth passes near this rocky trail every year, the comet rubble burns up in our atmosphere, lighting up the sky in meteor showers. In 2022, Earth is expected to cross close to the comet’s trail, producing a noticeable meteor shower.

Astronomers are studying the Spitzer image for clues to the comet’s composition and how it fell apart. Like NASA’s Deep Impact experiment, in which a probe smashed into comet Tempel 1, the cracked Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3 provides a perfect laboratory for studying the pristine interior of a comet.

This image was taken from May 4 to May 6 by Spitzer’s Multiband Imaging Photometer, using its 24-micron wavelength channel.

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About the Object Object Name: 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3
Object Type: comet

About the Data Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ W. Reach (SSC/Caltech)
Instrument: MIPS
Wavelength: 24 microns
Exposure Date: 4 to 6 May 2006
Exposure Time: 21 Hours
Release Date: 10 May 2006

Observers William Reach (Spitzer Science Center)
Michael Kelley (University of Minnesota)
Mark Sykes (Planetary Science Institute)
Carey Lisse (Applied Physics Laboratory/Johns Hopkins University)
Masateru Ishiguro (Seoul National University/Korea)

Asteroid-watchers worry about cosmic Katrina
Former astronaut presses campaign for global preparedness
By Leonard David
Senior space writer
Space.com
Updated: 8:47 p.m. ET May 6, 2006

LOS ANGELES - Natural events such as hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes rock this planet from time to time. But when Earth gets stoned by an asteroid, consider it akin to a Katrina from outer space.

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the United States in August of last year, it became a deadly, destructive, and costly episode — one that has also become a metaphor for lack of government action, both pre- and post-strike.

At the current time there is no agency of the U.S. government — or of any other government in the world — that has the explicit responsibility to develop and demonstrate the technology necessary to protect the planet from collisions with near-Earth objects, or NEOs.

The U.S. Congress needs to be encouraged to take a step in demonstrating the ability to deflect a menacing NEO, says former NASA astronaut Russell Schweickart, chairman of the B612 Foundation. On Saturday he presented an update on dealing with troublesome asteroids here at the 25th International Space Development Conference.

Key capabilities
The goal of B612, a confab of scientists, technologists, astronomers, astronauts and other specialists, is to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.

In detailing today’s NEO situation, Schweickart said there are several givens:

Earth is infrequently hit by asteroids that cross our orbit while circling the sun.
The consequences of such impacts range from the equivalent of a 15-megaton explosion to a civilization-ending gigaton event.
For the first time in the history of humankind, we have the technology to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future — if we are properly prepared.
“Remember, we’re dealing here with a less frequent, but far more devastating Katrina … a Katrina of the cosmos,” Schweickart reported.

“NEOs happen so infrequently that even though they are orders of magnitude more devastating, people don’t naturally make that match,” he told Space.com, “but you don’t want to be caught with your pants down.”

Schweickart said there are key capabilities that will enable humanity to avoid devastating cosmic collisions: early warning; a demonstrated deflection capability; and an established international decision making process.

While some progress is being made, there remains significant work ahead in all these areas, Schweickart emphasized.

Sky-sweeping surveys
If the current pace of sky-sweeping surveys is extrapolated into the future, on the order of 10,000 NEOs with some risk of impact over the next 100 years are likely to be cataloged by 2018, Schweickart forecast. The chances are better than even that none of these 10,000 will actually hit Earth in those 100 years.

“The important fact, however, is that a substantial number of them will appear as though they may be headed for impact,” Schweickart advised. Today, of the 104 currently on impact listings, “two have an elevated risk, and we are watching them closely,” he said.

At present, the two asteroids on that “keep an eye on them” roster are 2004 VD17 and Apophis, formerly listed as 2004 MN4.

“Extrapolating to 2018, we may have as many as 200 in a similarly elevated attention category and of growing concern to the general public,” Schweickart reported Saturday. “Therefore, it is certainly possible, if not likely, that in the time frame of the next 12 years we — the world — may well be in a position where we need to take action to ensure that we will be able to carry out a deflection mission if needed,” he said.

The U.S. Congress amended the Space Act in 2005 to charge NASA with responsibility to “detect, track, catalog and characterize” NEOs wider than 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter. However, thus far Congress has come up short on actually assigning the responsibility to take action, should one of these objects be discovered headed for a collision, Schweickart pointed out.

There is a bit of good news forthcoming, Schweickart explained. Congress did require NASA to provide by the end of 2006 an analysis of possible alternatives that could be employed to divert an object on a likely collision course with Earth. In response to this congressional directive, NASA is about to announce a process for carrying out this mandate.

Global threat … global response
Schweickart told the audience here that a third leg of the triad for protecting Earth from NEO impacts is probably the most challenging, albeit subtle.

“It is complicated by two related facts,” he said. NEO impacts are a global threat, not a national one, and the only decision-making body representing, essentially, the whole planet is the United Nations — a body not known for timely, crisp decision making, he added.

Still, in this area, steps forward are being made.

The Association of Space Explorers — the professional organization of astronauts and cosmonauts — has formed a committee on NEOs that Schweickart chairs. Earlier this year, a technical presentation at a U.N. meeting in Vienna apprised them that this issue was coming at them.

While the United Nations has been brought the problem, Schweickart said, the Association of Space Explorers is committed to bringing them a solution. This solution will take the form of a draft U.N. treaty, or protocol, formulated in a series of workshops over the next two years.

“In these NEO Deflection Policy workshops we will gather together a dozen or so international experts in diplomacy, international law, insurance and risk management, as well as space expertise to identify and wrestle with these difficult international issues,” Schweickart noted. “Our goal is to return to the U.N. in 2009 with a draft NEO Deflection Decision Protocol and present it to them for their consideration and deliberation.”

Facing the challenge
In wrapping up his ISDC talk, Schweickart said the NEO challenge, in a sense, “is an entry test for humankind to join the cosmic community.” He reasons that, if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe “it is virtually certain that it has already faced this challenge to survival … and passed it.”

“Our choice is to face this infrequent but substantial cosmic test … or pass into history, not as an incapable species like the dinosaurs, but as a fractious and self-serving creature with inadequate vision and commitment to continue its evolutionary development,” Schweickart concluded.

Leonard David is senior space writer for Space.com and the former editor of Ad Astra, the official magazine of the National Space Society. The views of this article are the author’s and do not reflect the policies of the National Space Society.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12665493/

Well, I must say THIS is good news…I was just about to order some titanium Wile E. Coyote umbrellas…

Rich

NASA says comet fragments won’t hit Earth
Space agency tries to quash rumors of killer tsunamis, mass extinctions
By Tariq Malik
Space.com
Updated: 7:36 p.m. ET April 27, 2006

Chunks of a comet currently splitting into pieces in the night sky will not strike the Earth next month, nor will it spawn killer tsunamis and mass extinctions, NASA officials said Thursday.

The announcement, NASA hopes, will squash rumors that a fragment of the crumbling Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (SW 3) will slam into Earth just before Memorial Day.

“There are some Internet stories going around that there’s going to be an impact on May 25,” NASA spokesperson Grey Hautaluoma, told SPACE.com. “We just want to get the facts out.”

Astronomers have been observing 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, a comet that circles the Sun every 5.4 years, for more than 75 years and are confident that any of the icy object’s fragments will remain at least a distant 5.5 million miles (8.8 million kilometers) from Earth — more than 20 times the distance to the moon —at closest approach between May 12 and May 28.

“We are very well acquainted with the trajectory of Comet 73P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3,” said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office, in a written statement. “There is absolutely no danger to people on the ground or the inhabitants of the International Space Station, as the main body of the object and any pieces from the breakup will pass many millions of miles beyond the Earth.”

The main SW 3 fragment, dubbed Fragment C, will make its closest pass by Earth on May 12 at a safe distance of 7.3 million miles (11.7 million kilometers), NASA said, adding that skywatchers will be able to use small telescopes to spot the comet chunks by scanning the constellation Vulpelca during the early-morning hours.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments have been watching SW 3’s disintegration. The comet’s numerous fragments stretch across several degrees of the night sky. For comparison, the moon’s diameter covers about one-half a degree in the sky.

“Catastrophic breakups may be the ultimate fate of most comets,” explained Hal Weaver, a planetary astronomer of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in a statement.

Weaver led a team of researchers during the Hubble observations of SW 3, and used the space telescope to study the break up of comets Shoemaker-Levy 9 — which was ripped apart by Jupiter’s gravity and hit the giant planet between 1993 and 1994 — Hyakutake in 1996, and 1999 S4 (LINEAR) in 2000, NASA said.

Hubble’s new SW 3 observations suggest that chunks of the comet are pushed behind its tail by the outgassing of Sun-facing pieces. Smaller pieces appear to be ejected from their nucleus faster than their larger brethren, while other fragments seem to simply fade away.

When set alongside studies by other observatories, Hubble’s images may help astronomers determine what is causing the comet’s disintegration as it nears the Earth and Sun, the space agency added.

German astronomers Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann first discovered the SW 3 comet in 1930 while hunting for asteroids. Despite its relatively short orbital period, the icy object was not seen again until 1979, and then was missed during a 1985 pass.

Since then, however, astronomers have kept a close eye on SW 3 and in 1995 observed its initial break up.

Aside from a great sky show, the comet poses no danger to Earth and its inhabitants, NASA officials said.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12521174/

Source from the Times-Standard Online

Lights in the sky around the globe
John Driscoll

OK. Let’s put this to rest.

Apparently Sunday night’s fireball in the skies over Northern California — of which we’ve had abundant reports — wasn’t the only one. In fact, several people have now reported seeing other fireballs on Monday and Tuesday nights.

Now, NASA is saying brilliant meteors are being seen around the globe. So what’s going on?

Apparently Earth is passing through a “river of space dust” associated with the comet Encke, as it does each year at this time, NASA says. But unlike in most years, the Taurid meteor shower is more intense this time around.

A computer model in 1993 predicted this year might be a special year for Taurid meteors. The meteors are larger than usual this time around, as large as pebbles or small stones, NASA said, though some may be larger. They travel thousands of miles per hour and when they strike the atmosphere can produce a fireball as bright as the moon, NASA says.

The best place to look for the meteors is in the constellation Taurus, which rises in the east at sunset. The show could last up to two weeks, but rain forecast for the next several days might derail your chances of seeing it.

Source from KUTV

Plans Being Developed To Avoid Asteroid Collisions
Nov 4, 2005 3:45 pm US/Mountain

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Imagine last year’s tsunami, last month’s earthquake in Pakistan, and Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma all rolled into one – and then some. If nations can’t handle those calamities, what’s going to happen when an asteroid collides with Earth?

In 30 years, there is a 1-in-5,500 chance that a smallish asteroid will land a bull’s eye on our planet. At 360 yards wide, it could take out New York City and much of the surrounding area.

Fortunately, experts believe further observations of the asteroid, 99942 Apophis, will almost certainly rule out an impact in 2036. Nevertheless, it’s precisely that kind of predictable and preventable threat – and the thought of being ill-prepared for it – that alarms the world’s normally intrepid spacefarers who are calling for action.

They issued an open letter at the Association of Space Explorers’ annual congress last month in Salt Lake City, making a rare, united push for strategies and spacecraft to prevent a cosmic pileup.

Two of the astronauts – Apollo 9’s Rusty Schweickart and shuttle and space station veteran Ed Lu – have even helped establish a foundation to spotlight the issue.

“There are always natural disasters and it always seems as though the preparation is somewhat less than adequate. But we have had a series of quite substantial ones here in the last year,” Schweickart said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Hollywood’s depiction of cosmic collisions – think “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” – has heightened public awareness, “but regrettably with the wrong solutions and overdramatization,” Schweickart said.

“You don’t want to send up Bruce Willis and others to save us. That’s Hollywood silliness,” he said, chuckling. Instead, technology is far enough along that an asteroid could be deflected before hitting Earth, he said.

For now, the astronauts are being cautious – some say too cautious – in their approach.

“A lot of the folks working in this area are really attuned to not being Chicken Little, saying, ‘Hey, this is going to kill us, it’s going to kill us,’ “ Lu said. “That’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that you need to start thinking about it ahead of time because afterward is way too late.

“The possible consequences are way worse than your run-of-the-mill natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes. As bad as they may be, this can dwarf them.”

Astronauts know better than most just how small and fragile and vulnerable the planet is.

“When you go around it in an hour and a half, again and again and again and again, day after day, in some cases now, month after month after month, the Earth becomes a pretty small place,” Schweickart said. “And then, of course … most astronauts tend to be aware of things like asteroids and their impacts. I mean, we romped around the moon after spending years in preparation by looking at every impact crater and volcano here on the Earth.”

It’s time, the space explorers say, for NASA to step up to the plate.

The association wants NASA to expand its Spaceguard Survey, a program that discovers and tracks near-Earth objects – asteroids and comets – that are at least two-thirds of a mile across. So far, 807 of an estimated 1,100 of these big rocky asteroids have been discovered in the inner solar system along with 57 comets; California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is plotting their future tracks.

An asteroid two-thirds of a mile wide, at impact, would be enough to easily take out a good-sized European country. By comparison, an asteroid or comet believed to be six to seven miles across wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

The space explorers want the many smaller, but still dangerous asteroids tracked as well. Altogether, 3,611 near-Earth asteroids of all sizes have been discovered, with an estimated 100,000 more capable of setting off a tsunami the size of the one that shook the Indian Ocean last December.

Scientists are carefully watching Apophis, which will whiz by Earth in 2029, passing within an unnerving 18,640 miles. That’s a few thousand miles closer than many communications satellites and 220,000 miles closer than the moon. In 2036, the concern is that it will move in even closer, leading to the 1-in-5,500 chance it will strike.

For a few hundred million dollars, the astronauts say, NASA could launch a scouting mission to Apophis in the next decade or two to place a radio transponder on the surface and thereby plot its course. But Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s near-Earth object program, contends that mostly likely, radar and telescope observations will ultimately rule out any risk of impact.

Schweickart agrees that based on the current odds, a deflection mission for Apophis would be a waste of money. “But the question is, do I agree with it when it’s 1-in-100, when it’s 1-in-50, if it’s 1-in-20. That is a policy question. At what probability do you begin to spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in order to do something?”

That’s not the only sticky policy question.

Are some places on the planet more dispensable than others? The point of impact, for instance, could be inadvertently shifted from one part of the world to another by an intervening spacecraft, jeopardizing one country instead of another. Who’s liable if an asteroid-deflecting mission goes awry? Indeed, who decides if such a mission is needed and how far in advance should that decision be made?

Nuclear electric propulsion would be ideal for quickly getting spacecraft to potential killer asteroids and nudging them out of Earth’s way, the astronauts say. But the technology for such an “asteroid tugboat” is on hold, a recent casualty of budget cuts.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, is sympathetic to the astronauts’ concerns and has asked NASA to see what might be needed to protect Earth from asteroid impacts.

Nuclear-powered spacecraft could either land on the asteroid and apply a small but continuous force over months in order to alter its Earth-smashing course, or hover above the asteroid and use its gravity to push it aside. Forget about any sensational last-minute asteroid crackups, “Armageddon” style; the pieces could wind up on a collision course with Earth.

Schweickart and Lu’s B612 Foundation – named after the home asteroid of the Earth-visiting prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Le Petit Prince” – is pushing for an orbit-altering demonstration by 2015 on a harmless, way-out-of-the-way asteroid.

The European Space Agency also is proposing a practice mission called Don Quixote to alter an asteroid’s course, but it’s yet to be formally approved. NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft smashed into a comet for scientific reasons in July; by design, it barely altered the comet’s path.

“We’re sitting in a shooting gallery, with hundreds of thousands of these things whizzing around in the inner solar system. So it’s just a matter of time,” said Schweickart, board chairman of the B612 Foundation.

Fortunately, the technology to protect us is ready for the task, he said, and that’s “the beauty of it.”

Source from MyWay news

Scientist: Comets Blasted Early Americans
Oct 28, 8:43 PM (ET)
By MEG KINNARD

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - A supernova could be the “quick and dirty” explanation for what may have happened to an early North American culture, a nuclear scientist here said Thursday.

Richard Firestone said at the “Clovis in the Southeast” conference that he thinks “impact regions” on mammoth tusks found in Gainey, Mich., were caused by magnetic particles rich in elements like titanium and uranium. This composition, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist said, resembles rocks that were discovered on the moon and have also been found in lunar meteorites that fell to Earth about 10,000 years ago.

Firestone said that, based on his discovery of similar material at Clovis sites, he estimates that comets struck the solar system during the Clovis period, which was roughly 13,000 years ago. These comets would have hit the Earth at 1,000 kilometers an hour, he said, obliterating many life forms and causing mutations in others.

“I’m not going to tell you that there’s Clovis people on the moon, or that they had a space program,” Firestone said. But these particles look “very much like the material that comes from the moon, which is the only place we’ve found with this same high titanium concentration.”

Amateur archaeologist Richard Callaway said he was surprised by Firestone’s theory.

“I’ve always considered myself a pretty open-minded person,” Callaway said, while browsing some of the artifacts on display at the conference. “And it’s kind of shocking to hear that something from the solar system could have done something like this.”

Callaway, an Episcopal priest from Atlanta, said that he and his wife have volunteered at the Topper site in Allendale County for the past two summers.

“To be a part of this … and find something no human being has touched in 15,000 years - that’s something,” Callaway said. “That’s what I like about what we do. You don’t find the next answer. You find the next question.”

Earlier Thursday, University of South Carolina archaeologist Al Goodyear lectured on his discoveries at Topper, where he says he has found evidence that man existed in North America much earlier than previously thought. Goodyear showed slides of the many tools he has recovered from Topper, as well as a charcoal strip he discovered in soil two meters beneath a 16,000-year-old level of the site.

“Topper’s like a box of chocolates,” Goodyear said. “Every time we dig a hole, something new comes up.”

As the final event of the four-day conference, partially sponsored by USC, Goodyear will lead attendees on a visit to Topper on Saturday.