Saturday, August 19, 2017

Signs in the Skies: 3-Mile Asteroid to Graze Past Earth On September 1st, Closest Ever Tracked…

Signs in the Skies: 3-Mile Asteroid to Graze Past Earth On September 1st, Closest Ever Tracked…

A massive asteroid estimated to be 2.7 miles wide is set to make a ‘relatively close encounter’ with Earth on September 1.

Dubbed ‘Florence,’ the huge space rock will pass just 4.4 million miles from our planet – or, about 18 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

According to NASA, this is the closest an asteroid of this size has come since they first began tracking near-Earth objects, giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study it up close through ground-based radar observations.

While it may sound alarming, NASA says asteroid Florence will safely fly past Earth at a distance of about 4.4 million miles (7 million kilometers).

It’s not the closest encounter our planet has seen with an NEO, but for this distance, the experts say it is the largest.

‘While many known asteroids have passed by closer to Earth than Florence will on September 1, all of those were estimated to be smaller,’ said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

‘Florence is the largest asteroid to pass by our planet this close since the NASA program to detect and track near-Earth asteroids began.’

The asteroid, named for Florence Nightingale, was first spotted in 1981, and the flyby in September will be the closest it’s come to Earth since 1890.

And, it won’t come this close again until 2,500.

According to NASA, it will even be visible to small telescopes in late August and early September, when it brightens to the ninth magnitude.

During this time, it will pass through the constellations Piscis Austrinus, Capricornus, Aquarius and Delphinus.

NASA scientists will use ground-based radar to observe its features up close, using radar imaging NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California and at the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

With these instruments, they will be able to see it’s true size, and even observe surface details as small as about 30 feet (10 meters).

IMPACT WILL HAPPEN 'SOONER OR LATER' EXPERT WARNS

Researchers have discovered most of the asteroids that are about a kilometers in size, but are now on the hunt for those that are about 140m - as they could cause catastrophic damage.

Although nobody knows when the next big impact will occur, scientists have found themselves under pressure to predict - and intercept - its arrival.

'Sooner or later we will get... a minor or major impact,' said Rolf Densing, who heads the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, ahead of International Asteroid Day on Friday.

It may not happen in our lifetime, he said, but 'the risk that Earth will get hit in a devastating event one day is very high.'

For now, there is little we can do.

And yet, the first-ever mission to crash a probe into a small space rock to alter its trajectory suffered a major setback when European ministers declined in December to fund part of the project.

'We are not ready to defend ourselves' against an Earth-bound object, said Densing. 'We have no active planetary defense measures.'

Earlier this month, the space agency revealed an asteroid the size of a house set to narrowly skim the Earth in October, after it was spotted by scientists for the first time in five years.

The asteroid, dubbed 2012 TC4, first flitted past our planet in October 2012 at about double the distance of its next expected pass, before disappearing.

Now the European Space Agency (ESA) has tracked down the giant hunk of rock, which is about 15 to 30 metres (49 to 98 feet) long and roughly the size of a house.

TC4's next approach, predicted for October 12, will bring the massive object 'damn close', according to experts, when it flies inside the moon's orbit – just far out enough to miss our geostationary satellites.

Eclipses of the past were calamitous, not celebratory

The August 21 solar eclipse is already an American phenomenon, but what if you witnessed an eclipse in centuries past? You might hear the sound of cameras clicking during the Great American Eclipse, but there was a time when you may have heard screams and doors being locked. Without science to provide a comfortable safety net for eclipse viewing, there was no telling what would happen. In his book “American Eclipse”, journalist David Baron reports there was a

Roman emperor who saw an eclipse in 840 AD, and was so distressed he stopped eating and starved to death. Without him, his people eventually plunged into a civil war. The ancient Greeks believed eclipses occurred when the gods were angry with humans, and the Babylonians believed it signified the death of a ruler. The Norse believed a hungry wolf was feasting on the sun, while in Vietnam it was a giant toad. According to LiveScience.com, Western Siberia’s Tatars thought a vampire tried to swallow the sun and failed after burning his tongue. READ MORE

Most severe blackout since 1999 leaves 6.8 million people without power in Taiwan

A massive power outage left more than 6 million people across 17 counties and cities without electricity for about five hours Tuesday evening. This is the country’s most severe blackout since the 1999 Jiji earthquake. A massive power blackout, after staff failed to switch the computerized valve to manual control when replacing a power supply unit, left millions without electricity on the island of Taiwan amid sweltering heat. Some 6.8 million people across 17 counties and
cities were left without electricity for about five hours. Electricity was restored by 10 pm.Taiwan is in the process of implementing a long-term policy to get rid of nuclear power and boost its solar-power capacity. But how it seems, the energy transition is risky and is calling for a slower change over. The Minister of Economics Affairs Chih-kung Lee resigned Tuesday evening amid the power crisis. READ MORE