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/

Trudeau thinks we’re gonna be invaded by aliens. Well, so does Speilberg…and Speilberg has video proof!

Source from Yahoo News

Former Canadian Minister Of Defence Asks Canadian Parliament Asked To Hold Hearings On Relations With Alien “Et” Civilizations Thu Nov 24, 7:00 AM ET

OTTAWA, CANADA (PRWEB) November 24, 2005 — A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics — relations with “ETs.”

By “ETs,” Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth.

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: “UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.”

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, “I’m so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something.”

Hellyer revealed, “The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop.”

Read the rest of the story here…
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Former Canadian Minister Of Defence Asks Canadian Parliament Asked To Hold Hearings On Relations With Alien “Et” Civilizations