The Mayan doomsday may have passed without incident, but it's too
early to relax. Astronomers have found a large asteroid heading this
way. However one private firm thinks it knows how to save us.
Scientists from the University of Hawaii said that the 140 meter asteroid's will just miss Earth as the orbital trajectory of the 2011 AG5 space object will bring it within 890,000 kilometers of our planet. That’s about twice as far away as the moon.
But we could still be in for a nasty surprise in 2040, if the path of the asteroid should change due to something called the Yarkovsky effect.
The effect is produced as asteroids or meteoroids absorb energy from the sun and re-radiate it into space as heat. This could slightly alter the space object’s trajectory.
To put it in perspective, comparable chunk of rock hit an unpopulated are in Siberia in 1908 producing energy equivalent to 1,000 times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
To avoid catastrophe, a Californian based company is cataloguing 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids to warn of and possibly deflect any threats.
Read Full Article>>>
Scientists from the University of Hawaii said that the 140 meter asteroid's will just miss Earth as the orbital trajectory of the 2011 AG5 space object will bring it within 890,000 kilometers of our planet. That’s about twice as far away as the moon.
But we could still be in for a nasty surprise in 2040, if the path of the asteroid should change due to something called the Yarkovsky effect.
The effect is produced as asteroids or meteoroids absorb energy from the sun and re-radiate it into space as heat. This could slightly alter the space object’s trajectory.
To put it in perspective, comparable chunk of rock hit an unpopulated are in Siberia in 1908 producing energy equivalent to 1,000 times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
To avoid catastrophe, a Californian based company is cataloguing 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids to warn of and possibly deflect any threats.
Read Full Article>>>