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Friday, February 08, 2013

A near miss

Yesterday's Telegraph records that if we are standing in the right place next week, namely the equator then we might just see a very close near miss as an asteroid measuring 150 feet across comes within 28,000 kilometres (17,000 miles in real money) of the earth.

The paper says that the 130,000 tonne space rock will miss Earth so narrowly that it will come within the orbit of some communication satellites, travelling at a speed of five miles per second, eight times the speed of a bullet from a rifle.

Could Lembit Opik have been right about something after all?
Comments:
Did you get the Patrick Moore Astronomy Book 2013 for Xmas?
 
It will have just missed Carwyn Jones' equatorial bulge
 
Our water came from where? Outer Space? At least some of it.

Earth was once pretty hot - so lacked a decent amount of liquid water on its surface - if it had any at all.

I'm not really sure why folks think planets in our kind of orbit should support high life forms like us - but for nuclear fission events in the Earth's core we would be a pretty cold place - too cold for much of our food crops.

Folks don't like to be reminded that we are standing, or sitting or lying on a piece of rock that is hot at its core because of nuclear fission events.

It's the principal reason we have earthquakes, volcanoes, SOx, and yes, a LOT of CO2 too!

Where do you think carbon dioxide comes from?

Just burning hydrocarbons?

You don't know it comes from thermal decomposition of calcium carbonate (limestone)?

What happens when limestone gets liquefied as it subsumes into the Earth’s molten core?

Why will Yellowstone blow its top again? Carbon dioxide is forming into a HUGE compressed reservoir below Yellowstone, and the rock above that reservoir is already bulging – NASA has the data on that. I kid you not.

We will see at some point huge quantities of carbon dioxide dwarfing anything man can put into the atmosphere - it will suddenly spike - and 'Bob's your uncle' we will be back in the hot zone - large animals can one day walk the earth again!

And the Welsh Assembly puts its faith in cotton shopping bags.

Meanwhile the DOD is putting its faith in white light STRs (stir tank reactors, ‘and the like’) for growing food absent natural sunlight.

Pretty soon we might be making use of those STRs.

Just a pity that Wales didn’t back my idea about manufacturing and storing them ready for de-mothballing ‘when the time comes’. Ha ha (I’m joking … maybe not).

 
PS That Telegraph article spoke to an explosive energy/force of 2.4 million tonnes of TNT (2.4 Megatons); the yield of a hydrogen bomb (fusion weapon) - well Yellowstone will have a yield several orders of magnitude more than that. Maybe around 1,000 hydrogen bombs - maybe 10,000 hydrogen bombs equivalent - millions of tons of rock will be pulverized and thrown into the atmosphere - the Earth will cool down to the extent people will be praying for global warming to actually happen. A global cool down is FAR MORE dangerous to mankind than global warming. More carbon dioxide will mean more plant (including crop) growth. Millions of tons of fine ash in the air will mean crop failures on a MASSIVE SCALE. Hence the strategic importance of white-light STRs. I kid you not - the countries that stock-pile WLSTRs will be the superpower(s) post-Yellowstone. And the Welsh Assembly's answer: cotton shopping bags - I kid you not.
 
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