Scientists are predicting that the asteroid 2012 DA14 has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months. Watch the skies in February 2013!
According to RT, NASA has confirmed that the 60 meter (or 197 feet) asteroid, which was spotted by Spanish stargazers in February this year, has a good chance of colliding with earth.
The scientists suggest confronting this asteroid with either big guns or, more strangely, with paint. The problem with either option is that there is no time to build a spaceship for the operation.
A spaceship could either shoot the asteroid down or simply crash into it - this would either break it into pieces or throw it off course. ...
The paint would change the asteroid's ability to reflect sunlight, alter its spin and change its temperature. ....
The asteroid's closest approach to earth is scheduled for 15 February 2013, when they predict that the distance between it and earth will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles).
With the asteroid zooming that low, it will be too late to do anything with it besides trying to predict its final destination and the consequences of impact.
However, NASA's David Dunham did say: “The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most parts of it will never reach the planet’s surface.”
But theories are that if the entire asteroid did crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia.
Actually breaking the asteroid up into pieces isn't necessarily a good thing. At least they'll know right before the collision where the asteroid would hit. You'd have some warning, even if only a few hours. Breaking it up though creates a shotgun effect, raining large rocks down upon the Earth. You won't be able to predict where they will hit.
While this asteroid is unlikely to impact Earth, there are other bigger asteroids out there that are on path to collide with the Earth decades down the road. We have no plan of action for them.
But the United States has a far bigger concern in its own backyard. The super volcano at Yellowstone is overdue to go off, a situation which would have devastating consequences for the United States. A 2011 story in the U.K. Daily Mail describes:
|Estimated ashfall of last Yellowstone eruption|
It would explode with a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980.
Spewing lava far into the sky, a cloud of plant-killing ash would fan out and dump a layer 10ft deep up to 1,000 miles away.
Two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes.
This is the nightmare that scientists are predicting could happen if the world’s largest super-volcano erupts for the first time in 600,000 years, as it could do in the near future.
Yellowstone National Park’s caldera has erupted three times in the last 2.1million years and researchers monitoring it say we could be in for another eruption.
They said that the super-volcano underneath the Wyoming park has been rising at a record rate since 2004 - its floor has gone up three inches per year for the last three years alone, the fastest rate since records began in 1923.
...To read more, click here.
Make no mistake about it, Yellowstone's Super Volcano will erupt, the only question is when. The result will be instant death to millions of Americans, not to mention millions more who will die or be severely injured from breathing toxic dust that also cuts the lungs. Two-thirds of the United States will probably be rendered uninhabitable.
But, hey, let's instead worry about the Earth becoming a few degrees warmer over several centuries, even though temperatures on Earth have fluctuated for 4.5 billion years.. That's a far bigger concern than mankind being wiped out by an asteroid or vocano....he says with extreme sarcasm.