Earth under attack from Death Star!

[Marduk2012 Profile]

Dawn Approaches the Asteroid Belt




A new mission to explore the largest asteroids in the Solar System.

On September 27, 2007, NASA launched the Dawn spacecraft on a mission that will take it into the asteroid belt, where it will study two of the largest planetesimals in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, Ceres and Vesta. Dawn is so named because it will be observing objects thought to have existed since the dawn of the Solar System. "Asteroid" was first coined by William Herschel and means "star-like." Ceres was the first asteroid discovered in 1801 by Guiseppe Piazzi and the largest known, with a diameter of approximately 950 kilometers. Since no spacecraft has visited Ceres, its size estimate is determined by combining data from various telescope observations. Ceres compares in size to Saturn's moons Tethys and Dione and might look similar to Dione, with craters and ridges, although Ceres is about 15% smaller.

Ceres has recently been added to the roster of "dwarf planets" along with Pluto—Ceres being the only one within the asteroid belt. Vesta, the first one of the Dawn mission's targets, could also be added, something that data from the space probe will help to determine. Vesta is the second largest asteroid, with a diameter of approximately 530 kilometers. It was found in 1807 by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers. Using Saturn's moons for scale again, Vesta compares to Enceladus or Mimas in size. There are indications that Vesta has experienced some powerful collisions in the past, since more than one large crater marks its surface. One of the craters near Vesta's south pole is 460 kilometers in diameter, more than 80% of the asteroid's size. The crater is close to 13 kilometers below the mean elevation of the terrain, with a rim about 6 kilometers above. There is an 18 kilometer high central peak, as well. Why did an impact that removed more than 1% of the asteroid's mass not blast it into pieces?

The "rubble pile" theory of asteroid composition was created to help explain the mass anomalies that have been seen in asteroid crater studies. Other asteroids, as well as small moons, exhibit craters that should have exploded them into fragments when they were hit. The only suitable explanation, according to gravity-based models, is that they are loosely compacted. It is presumed that they act like big sand piles and absorb the impacts without shattering. They have no hard crust to begin with so they haven't fractured despite repeated pounding. The Electric Universe theory of asteroid formation does not require that one object smash into another one for there to be craters. Electric arcs can gouge surfaces and scoop out material, accelerating it into space, leaving clean, deep pits. Comets also exhibit surface features that are the same as those observed on asteroids, so the conclusion is that the two are really one thing and not "dirty snowballs" versus rocky bodies.

Plasma arcs do not disturb the surrounding surfaces when they are used in industrial applications. Based on laboratory analysis, that is what has occurred on Vesta and on all the asteroids, moons, and planets of the solar system: plasma discharge erosion. Planetary scientists ignore electrical explanations, which rectify the anomalies in other theories, because they know almost nothing about plasma and electric currents in space. Electricity can create the very things they are sending out probes to study

[Marduk2012 Profile]

Earth's 10+1 Most Impressive Impact Craters




Ever since our recent encounter with asteroid 2008 TC3 — the first asteroid that was correctly predicted to hit our planet — Earth has about 175 known impact craters, but surely our planet has endured more bashing than that in its history. All the other terrestrial planets and moons in our solar system are covered by impact craters. Just look at our Moon through a telescope or binoculars, or check out the recent images of Mercury sent back by the MESSENGER spacecraft, or pictures of Mars from the armada of spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, and you'll see that impact craters are the most common landforms in our solar system. But since two-thirds of Earth is covered by water, any asteroid impacts occurring in the oceans are difficult to find. And even though Earth's atmosphere protects us from smaller asteroids, just like in the case of 2008 TC3, which broke up high in the atmosphere, weathering, erosion and the tectonic cycling of Earth's crust have erased much of the evidence of Earth's early bombardment by asteroids and comets. Most of Earth's impact craters have been discovered since the dawn of the space age, from satellite imaging. In fact, a geologist recently discovered an impact crater using Google Earth! Here's my list of Earth's Ten+1 Most Impressive Impact Craters, starting with #1. the largest and oldest known impact crater, Vredefort Crater, shown above, located in South Africa. It is approximately 250 kilometers in diameter and is thought to to be about two billion years old. The Vredefort Dome can be seen in this satellite image as a roughly circular pattern. What an impact that must have been!




2. Manicouagan Crater: fifth largest known impact crater. This crater is located in Quebec, Canada. It was created about 212 million years ago. Now, it is an ice-covered lake about 70 km across. This image, taken by space shuttle astronauts, shows an outer ring of rock. Close up, the rock reveals clear signs of having been melted and altered by a violent collision. The original rim of the crater, though now eroded away, is thought to have had a diameter of about 100 km.





3. Chicxulub Crater, third largest and possible dinosaur killer.The third largest impact crater lies mostly underwater and buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. At 170km (105 miles) in diameter, the impact is believed to have occurred roughly 65 million years ago when a comet or asteroid the size of a small city crashed, unleashing the equivalent to 100 teratons of TNT. Likely, it caused destructive tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions around the world, and is widely believed to have led to the extinction of dinosaurs, because the impact probably created a global firestorm and/or a widespread greenhouse effect that caused long-term environmental changes.





4. Aorounga Crater: possible triple crater. The main Aorounga Crater in Chad, Africa, visible in this radar image from space, shows a concentric ring structure that is about 17 kilometers wide. But, this crater might have been formed as the result of a multiple impact event. A second crater, similar in size to the main crater, appears as a circular trough in the center of the image. And a third structure, also about the same size, is seen as a dark, partial circular trough on the right side of the image. The proposed crater "chain" could have formed when a 1 km to 2 km (0.5 mile to 1 mile) diameter object broke apart before impact. Eheh..!





5. Clearwater Craters: two for the price of one. Twin, lake-filled impact craters in Quebec, Canada were probably formed simultaneously, about 290 million years ago, by two separate but probably related meteorite impacts. The larger crater, Clearwater Lake West has a diameter of 32 km, and Clearwater Lake East is 22 km wide.




6. Barringer Crater: well preserved. While this crater isn't all that big, what's most impressive about Barringer Crater in Arizona (USA) is how well preserved it is. Measuring 1.2 km across and 175 m deep, Barringer Crater was formed about 50,000 years ago by the impact of an iron meteorite, probably about 50 m across and weighing several hundred thousand tons. Most of the meteorite was vaporized or melted, leaving only numerous, mostly small fragments with in the crater and scattered up to 7 km from the impact site. Only about 30 tons, including a 693-kg sample, are known to have been recovered.





7. Wolfe Creek Crater, well preserved, too. Another relatively well-preserved meteorite crater is found in the desert plains of north-central Australia. Wolfe Creek crater is thought to be about 300,000 years old and is 880 meters across and and about 60 meters deep. It's partially buried under the wind-blown sand of the region, and although the unusual landform was well-known to the locals, scientists didn't find the crater until 1947.






8. Deep Bay Crater: deep and cold. Deep Bay crater is located in Saskatchewan, Canada. The bay is a strikingly circular 13 km wide impact crater and is also very deep (220 m). It is part of an otherwise irregular and shallow lake. The age of the crater is estimated to be 99 million years old.





9. Kara-Kul Crater: high altitude crater. This crater was formed about 10 million years ago, and is located in Tajikistan, near the Afghan border. In total, the crater is about 45 km in diameter and is partially filled with a 25 km-wide lake. This might be the "highest" impact crater, almost 6,000 m above sea-level in the Pamir Mountain Range. It was found only recently from satellite images.





10. Bosumtwi Crater: built of bedrock. The last crater on our tour of impressive impact craters is this located in Ghana, Africa. It is about 10.5 km in diameter and about 1.3 million years old. The crater is filled almost entirely by water, creating Lake Bosumtwi. The lakebed is made of crystalline bedrocks.



Last but not least ,the famous Nördlinger Ries of Germany....I was been there.. amazing






Germany´s finest. It was originally assumed that the Ries was of volcanic origin.Recent computer modeling of the impact event indicates that the impactors probably had diameters of about 1.5 kilometers (4,900 ft) (Ries) and 150 meters (490 ft) (Steinheim), had a pre-impact separation of some tens of kilometers, and impacted the target area at an angle around 30 to 50 degrees from the surface in a west-southwest to east-northeast direction. The impact velocity is thought to have been about 20 km/s (45,000 mph). The resulting explosion had the power of 1.8 million Hiroshima bombs.

The Ries crater impact event is believed to be the source of moldavite tektites found in Bohemia, a lost province of Germany. The tektite melt originated from a sand-rich surface layer and was ejected to distances up to 450 km downrange of the crater. Stone buildings in Nördlingen contain millions of tiny diamonds, all less than 0.2 millimeter across. The impact that caused the Nördlinger Ries crater created an estimated 72,000 tonnes of them when it impacted a local graphite deposit. Stone from this area was quarried and used to build the stone buildings. In 1960 two American scientists, Eugene Shoemaker and Edward Chao, proved that the depression was caused by meteorite impact. The key evidence was the presence of coesite (shocked quartz), which, in natural unmetamorphosed rocks can only be formed by the shock pressures associated with meteorite impact.

[Marduk2012 Profile]

Asteroid blast reveals holes in Earth’s defences




As the US government ponders a strategy to deal with threatening asteroids, a dramatic explosion over Indonesia has underscored how blind we still are to hurtling space rocks.

On 8 October 2009 an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed. However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth's surface, says astronomer Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada.

Brown and Elizabeth Silber, also of UWO, estimated the explosion energy from infrasound waves that rippled halfway around the world and were recorded by an international network of instruments that listens for nuclear explosions. The explosion was heard by witnesses in Indonesia. Video images of the sky following the event show a dust trail characteristic of an exploding asteroid.

Sudden impact

The amount of energy released suggests the object was about 10 metres across, the researchers say. Such objects are thought to hit Earth about once per decade. No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact. That is not surprising, given that only a tiny fraction of asteroids smaller than 100 metres across have been catalogued, says Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet objects as small as 20 or 30 metres across may be capable of doing damage on the ground, he says.

"If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes," says Spahr. "A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars." The US Office of Science and Technology Policy, which advises the White House, must develop a policy to address the asteroid hazard by October 2010 under a deadline imposed by 2008 legislation. It is likely to be influenced by a report from the National Research Council on the asteroid problem, which is expected by year's end.

[Nickelson Profile]

The majority of star system that we know about are binary systems (meaning 2 stars). The Solar system is a bit of an oddity as we do not have a companion star.... or do we?

btw to aladin and nickleson.. Oort cloud.. Van Allen belt.. There is a subtle difference

I really do know the difference Mushroom.

Man, you missed the point The dwarf isn't gonna hit us ... but it will send us huge objects like the asteroids that once killed the dinosaures

You are so correct on this certain peeps sure are missing some reading ability. The Brown Dwarf for one is OUTSIDE our solar system, BEHIND the Van Oort Belt and APPERANTLY approaching the Van Oort Belt, which will create due its gravity force great disturbance within the Van Oort Belt (Aladin). Meaning Comets will be "shot" through our Solar System and an impact on Earth is very reasonable. Most Comets will impact the Sun for sure, but Earth is in a great danger to.

Nemesis (or what you like to call it) is for real. Get used to it.

Space is NOT your best friend. I am sorry guy’s space creates life, but it also takes life like that! It's a cause of nature nothing more nothing less. The only shitty part is we're getting smarter and WISER everyday, so when we are “(un)lucky” we can and will predict our own extinction, although we might.

Asteroid blast reveals holes in Earth’s defences




As the US government ponders a strategy to deal with threatening asteroids, a dramatic explosion over Indonesia has underscored how blind we still are to hurtling space rocks.

On 8 October 2009 an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed. However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth's surface, says astronomer Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada.

Brown and Elizabeth Silber, also of UWO, estimated the explosion energy from infrasound waves that rippled halfway around the world and were recorded by an international network of instruments that listens for nuclear explosions. The explosion was heard by witnesses in Indonesia. Video images of the sky following the event show a dust trail characteristic of an exploding asteroid.

Sudden impact

The amount of energy released suggests the object was about 10 metres across, the researchers say. Such objects are thought to hit Earth about once per decade. No telescope spotted the asteroid ahead of its impact. That is not surprising, given that only a tiny fraction of asteroids smaller than 100 metres across have been catalogued, says Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet objects as small as 20 or 30 metres across may be capable of doing damage on the ground, he says.

"If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes," says Spahr. "A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars." The US Office of Science and Technology Policy, which advises the White House, must develop a policy to address the asteroid hazard by October 2010 under a deadline imposed by 2008 legislation. It is likely to be influenced by a report from the National Research Council on the asteroid problem, which is expected by year's end.

Marduk thanks for your massive input on this thread, really interesting stuff to look into.

[Marduk2012 Profile]

[Shadowkhas Profile]

The majority of star system that we know about are binary systems (meaning 2 stars). The Solar system is a bit of an oddity as we do not have a companion star.... or do we?

btw to aladin and nickleson.. Oort cloud.. Van Allen belt.. There is a subtle difference

I really do know the difference Mushroom. [...]BEHIND the Van Oort Belt:

It's not "Van Oort," is what he's getting at. Just Oort.

[Nickelson Profile]

The majority of star system that we know about are binary systems (meaning 2 stars). The Solar system is a bit of an oddity as we do not have a companion star.... or do we?

btw to aladin and nickleson.. Oort cloud.. Van Allen belt.. There is a subtle difference

I really do know the difference Mushroom. [...]BEHIND the Van Oort Belt:

It's not "Van Oort," is what he's getting at. Just Oort.

Well then he still is slightly wrong, because I am Dutch on first plase and because its also the Cloud van Oort in Dutch language, because of the hypothetical thought of Prof. Jan Hendrik Oort (a Dutchman). That's why in Holland we put Van in front of Oort.

Actually we should call The Oort cloud, but hey, we're talking about the same cloud here.



You can't even point out Earth in this picture Dams I feel tiny today

[Svaha Profile Website]

Maybe Niburu and Nemesis are both true.
It is not only the Maya calendar that 'ends' in 2012, it is also the end of the iron age and the beginning of the golden age, the last hinting directly at a shift in consciousness.
That is what the sun does/is doing right now.
Here in Egypt / Europe there is the end of the sign Fish and the beginning of Aquarius probably in the year 2160 (if the calendar was not messed up some time ago)
Aquarius is known as a destroyer sign, the cycle is appr. 6480 year and that could maybe be 'NIburu'.

There are in all these old 'calendars' many cycles great and small that can come close together at some points on the timeline and not all calendars have a linear concept of the duration of the four ages/worlds. I did not look at cycles that take millions of years but to my knowing the two cycles that come together now (closely) are the cycles of 6480 years and 25920 year.

Cycles like for instance the plaques in Egypt can be proven to be caused by a giant vulcano in the meditteranian area, could be that this were just local events or global.
So lot's of questions here.

For now I assume/hope that there will be a conscious shift first, outbursts of the sun.

[Illuminated Profile]

great thread, not such an awesome subject

but allow me to add
[youtube]vZiZU42sn6w&feature=related[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiZU42s ... re=related