Rocks Falling From The Sky!

[alex_greene]

This morning, ahead of the close fly-by of asteroid 2012 DA14, Russia got a taste of what it would be like if a rock actually hit us ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ-Y7vhS1JE (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f525TmMSBs0 (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-0iwBEswE (video)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvJKoQE8uwE#! (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfzWUviOEds (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cRHsApzt8 (video)

These are genuine videos. Rocks really did fall out of the sky. Not only that - the impact injured hundreds of people and caused property damage ...

Think I will just go and find a cellar and sweat a little today ...

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Apparently 500 people were hurt by falling glass and such.

A piece of the meteorite was supposedly found in a nearby lake.

This bolide event is not related to the asteroid 2012 DA14 event. This meteorite came in from an entirely different direction. BUT, the timing is sure interesting.

Wonder if this will wake people up to the real danger of NEAs? Probably not.

 

[Captain Jonah]

I don't have a cellar (top floor apartment) but I will be sitting on the roof with a glass of something warm and watching the show if any.

Scientists say this is not related to the flyby they have been tracking. Oh so the bus sized object arrived and hit us and they didn't notice it. :shock:

NEAs are like any other disaster preparation. Solar flares that take out our entire orbital infrastructure. The 10 years it would take to replace the blown transformer stations worldwide in the event of a high magnitude event. Disaster planning is the sort of thing that keeps a bunch of civil servants occupied writing reports and plans that may never be practiced or updated for decades.

Lets face it, in a country that is unable to handle the wrong kind of snow or leaves on the tracks, that builds on flood plains and then after they flood one year build flood defences that promptly fail the next. A country that has droughts and hose pipe bans and a few hundred miles away floods. A country where our infrastructure in many cases is over 100 years old (Victorian).

The chance of an asteroid or meteorite strike is so small that the likelihood of any consideration being given to it is nil.

Let’s face it, the UK cannot handle a few inches of snow. An Armageddon level event is going to be chaos and anarchy. Far more will die in the aftermath than will be killed in the event itself.

Of course our well trained if poorly equipped armed forces will be the best force we have to deal with such a disaster. Oh wait, how many of them do we have left :roll:

 

[Nathan Brazil]

The Nasa Live Feed of Asteroid 2012 DA14 flyby. Enjoy...

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

 

[Mithras]

Did you hear the second and third explosions after the main one, what do you think they were? Sonic reflections from other buildings??

 

[F33D]

Did you hear the second and third explosions after the main one, what do you think they were? Sonic reflections from other buildings??

No, from same object. You don't get a single "boom" from a supersonic object but, a series as it travels.

 

[Captain Jonah]

The object was going faster than the speed of sound anyway so the sound of its passing overhead arrived after it did.

Some of the videos were close to the impact explosion and the sonic booms didn't arrive until after the blast from the impact.

This close to the impact point where it passed close by overhead could have been hit by the impact shockwave through the ground, and the blast front from the impact and then by the shock wave from the supersonic passage of the rock overhead.

They would be very close together but you could notice a slight difference in the booms.

Plus the object was fragmenting in mid air and dropped debris across the city so there could have been secondary explosions mid air from large chunks explosively fragmenting.

That’s the problem with these sort of events. Hollywood always has the perfect camera angles. :lol:

Now of course we have to wait to find out what it was, if the Russians who are crawling all over the impact point tell us the truth anyway. :wink:

PS for conspiracy buffs. The Russians are saying it landed in a lake now. If so where did the huge impact and shockwave come from on some of the clips? That was a ground impact not a water one unless the lake is shallow.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Asteroid 2012 DA14 flying away from Earth now. We live...

 

[F33D]

PS for conspiracy buffs. The Russians are saying it landed in a lake now. If so where did the huge impact and shockwave come from on some of the clips?

The shockwaves that shattered windows & the like was from the sonic boom...

 

[AndrewW]

Asteroid 2012 DA14 flying away from Earth now. We live...

That was just a test as the aliens out there work to improve their targetting.

 

[alex_greene]

It was getting our range for Apophis ...

 

[Mithras]

The Russians are saying it landed in a lake now. If so where did the huge impact and shockwave come from on some of the clips? That was a ground impact not a water one unless the lake is shallow.

I think the army have located 3 landing/impact areas.

 

[alex_greene]

The Russians are saying it landed in a lake now. If so where did the huge impact and shockwave come from on some of the clips? That was a ground impact not a water one unless the lake is shallow.

I think the army have located 3 landing/impact areas.

If they see tripod walking machines emerging from the impact sites ... we should worry.

 

[Mithras]

The Russians are saying it landed in a lake now. If so where did the huge impact and shockwave come from on some of the clips? That was a ground impact not a water one unless the lake is shallow.

I think the army have located 3 landing/impact areas.

If they see tripod walking machines emerging from the impact sites ... we should worry.

My thought exactly, just like the start of George Pal's War of the Worlds......

 

[Mithras]

If this had happened over Oakland or Freemont, Nebraska, (picked at random) with 1,000 injured Americans , I suspect NASA would be enjoying a nice budget increase for the exploration of near earth asteroids.

 

[Captain Jonah]

The Russians are saying it landed in a lake now. If so where did the huge impact and shockwave come from on some of the clips? That was a ground impact not a water one unless the lake is shallow.

I think the army have located 3 landing/impact areas.

If they see tripod walking machines emerging from the impact sites ... we should worry.

Well they do come in groups of three. :wink:

Has anyone heard anything about the impact sites or is there a blackout there with the army units not in contact with higher command :shock:

 

[Galadrion]

If this had happened over Oakland or Freemont, Nebraska, (picked at random) with 1,000 injured Americans , I suspect NASA would be enjoying a nice budget increase for the exploration of near earth asteroids.

Hmph. Not under this administration. By his record, Obama is only slightly less hostile towards NASA than Senator Proxmire was, and he's got a working majority of Congress behind him on that issue. I suspect it would take a large eminent personal threat to get him to reverse that stance... and the reversal would only hold for as long as he felt the threat did.

 

[Mithras]

If this had happened over Oakland or Freemont, Nebraska, (picked at random) with 1,000 injured Americans , I suspect NASA would be enjoying a nice budget increase for the exploration of near earth asteroids.

Hmph. Not under this administration. By his record, Obama is only slightly less hostile towards NASA than Senator Proxmire was...

Hah, I don't know of Senator Proxmire, but I get your meaning. Its telling that only the Russians and the Chinese can put humans into space :0

 

[Galadrion]

William Proxmire, Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, replaced Joseph McCarthy (of "Red Scare" fame) after his death. Served from 1957 to 1989. Outspoken against all forms of "pork-barrel politics"... except those which benefited his own constituency, such as dairy subsidies. From Wikipedia:

Proxmire earned the unending enmity of space advocates and science fiction fandom for his opposition to space colonization, ultimately eliminating spending on said research from NASA's budget. In response to a segment about space colonies run by the CBS program 60 Minutes, Proxmire stated that; "it's the best argument yet for chopping NASA's funding to the bone .... I say not a penny for this nutty fantasy". Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven retaliated by writing the award-winning stories Death and the Senator, Fallen Angels, and The Return of William Proxmire. In a number of circles his name has become a verb, meaning to unfairly obstruct scientific research for political gain.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Well the last time this was going on it took JFK to get things going and recover the lack of US technology after sputnik. Or was it the crashed Transformer ship on the dark side :wink:

Space technology is an odd field, it has produced many things that have filtered down into the rest of the world but few things from the world are as useful for aero or exo spacial development.

Remote probes are ok for the easy stuff but to have a truly versatile research and exploration unit on site you need a person. Reacting via a long comm lag to events on the spot is far less useful than a person standing there.

I suspect that the US will pick up any truly new space tech eventually, the problem is likely to be that without the world leading researchers, scientists and engineers the pace of development is likely to be slow.

Unless of course the CIA are able to get in and steal any components from our alien visitors who crashed over Russia after a drive failure while trying to perform a stealth recon run. Never leave a bunch of scientists in charge of a lab ship, always fly with a pilot :lol: