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Space & Astronomy

NASA issues doomsday asteroid all-clear

By T.K. Randall
October 10, 2015 · Comment icon 47 comments



No giant asteroids will be destroying human civilization this week. Image Credit: NASA
Amid the numerous doomsday predictions of recent weeks comes the news that we are actually quite safe.
Ever since the Millennium Bug promised to crash all the world's computers and send us back to the Stone Age, predictions of an impending apocalypse have been coming in thick and fast.

One of the most recent was the Blood Moon Prophecy - a series of four consecutive lunar eclipses occurring within the space of two years - which some people believed was an indication that human civilization was about to meet its untimely demise.

When that didn't happen another potential doomsday was brought in to the limelight - this time involving a collision with a huge asteroid measuring almost two miles across.
Now NASA has moved to dispel concerns on the matter by revealing that the potentially lethal space rock has in fact passed safely by our planet at a distance of around 15 million miles.

The space agency actively tracks and characterizes large numbers of asteroids within the vicinity of Earth and believes that the risk of a collision within the next 100 years is pretty much negligible.

With advances in robotic missions and asteroid deflection techniques it is also likely that by the time an asteroid really does threaten our planet we will actually be able to do something about it.

The destruction of humanity at the hands of a large space rock may in fact never happen at all.

Source: Telegraph | Comments (47)


Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #38 Posted by ShadowSot 8 years ago
Advanced telescopes are guided so the object would be in the center of the optics as long as you want. There are also advanced amateur telescope mounts on the market, fast enough to follow, for example, the ISS as long as it passes the sky above the area where the telescope is operating. Thanks for tgw correction, ive always been told something like an asteroid would be too dark and fast to see properly through most telescopes.
Comment icon #39 Posted by DONTEATUS 8 years ago
Well with 1618 PHA`s out there and To NASA close is millions of miles away , I can sleep better for a few hundred years now ! But can you just Imagine what if one that Big really did blind sight us ?
Comment icon #40 Posted by DONTEATUS 8 years ago
Boy the wheels on this buss just keep going round & Round ! Close is only good in Handshakes & Pee-knuckle !
Comment icon #41 Posted by DONTEATUS 8 years ago
Its all Relative ! RIght ? Space is Really,REALLY BIG ! Just remember what Douglas Adams wrote, ANd THe Rocks that may come our way some day Can really say "BOOM,BOOM OUT GO THE LIGHTS"
Comment icon #42 Posted by Immune to Bieberfever 8 years ago
Yep but without that day, your lights will go out anyway!
Comment icon #43 Posted by qxcontinuum 8 years ago
God is protecting us !
Comment icon #44 Posted by badeskov 8 years ago
God is protecting us ! That was sarcasm, right? Cheers, Badeskov
Comment icon #45 Posted by Hammerclaw 8 years ago
Are we all on the same page? 2015 TB145 will approach within 0.00326 AU, on 10/31 at 17:00 UT. http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/2009FD/2009FD_planning.html?dom=prime&src=syn
Comment icon #46 Posted by Waspie_Dwarf 8 years ago
Are we all on the same page? 2015 TB145 will approach within 0.00326 AU, on 10/31 at 17:00 UT. http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/2009FD/2009FD_planning.html?dom=prime&src=syn This topic was about a smaller asteroid which has long since passed by.
Comment icon #47 Posted by Hammerclaw 8 years ago
This topic was about a smaller asteroid which has long since passed by. Obviously, but that asteroid was described as "two miles across" by the OP. This one is much smaller. So many posts after the encounter date were what threw me.


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