In a weeks time, on the 29th September, there is a rather large rock coming very close to Earth - it’s the asteroid Toutatis which is 3 miles long and 1.5 miles wide and weighs about 50 billion tons. By close that means around 960,000 miles which is close in astronomical terms. While being that close is not likely to be a danger to us this time, the orbit of Toutatis brings it past the Earth every 4 years, and recent distances have been 2,244,774miles in 1992, 3,293,452miles in 1996, 6,866,209miles in 2000 and 962,951miles this year, which seems very erratic to me and lets hope in 4 years time it’s not 0miles! While it’s not worth getting excited about this year, not even watching it cross the sky unless you are in Australia, it’s worth being aware of the danger of near Earth objects and understanding it is possible Earth could be hit by one - meteors enter the Earths atmosphere all the time, and most burn up before they hit Earth, but many do hit and have caused considerable devastation in the past - imagine what a 3 mile long 50ton lump of nickel and iron could do if it hit us!
Come on Barry, you've been watching too many Bruce Willis films.
The chances are remote and anyway, I read somewhere that America is the most likely country to be hit by an asteriod because there are more cars there. Asteroids are magnetic and so America would pull the meteor in.
Actually what is the difference between a meteor and an asteroid?
Kate, it may not be worth worrying about this one as I said, but it is good to be aware of the problem and consider what could be done in the future. While I have very little love of nuclear or other weapons, it would be a better use of them to blow up objects that do come in on a collision course with Earth than try to kill each other on this planet with them.
These things do happen - remember the comet that crashed into Jupiter a few years back, what if it had been Earth? About 100 years ago a small asteroid or meteor devastated a large area of Siberia - imagine if that had been London or some other large city.
The basic difference between a meteor and asteroid is size, the asteroid is larger - a sort of small planet.
No truth whatsoever to the whole cars and magnetism thing. The asteroid is like a bullet. It's going to hit whatever is in its path and magnetism will have nothing to do with it. The most likely place for a strike is an ocean.
Why even worry about it to begin with? It's out of our control. Nuclear missiles wouldn't do a thing against something of that size. One scientist equated shooting an asteroid (in space or atmosphere) with a nuclear warhead to trying to shoot one bullet out of the sky with another. Next to impossible.
I would actually welcome the change. Let's see if rats and roaches can do a better job of running the planet.
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