As astronomers track down more clues as to the existence of a large world orbiting the sun in the outer fringes of the solar system, a classic planetary purveyor of doom has been resurrected as a possible trigger behind mass extinctions on Earth.
Yes, I’m talking about “Planet X.” And yes, there’s going to be hype.
MORE: 9th Planet May Lurk in the Outer Solar System.
Astronomers have captured video evidence of a collision between Jupiter and a small celestial object, likely a comet or asteroid. Though it looks like a small blip of light, the resulting explosion was unusually powerful.
As Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy reports, the collision occurred on March 17, but confirmation of the event only emerged this week. An amateur Austrian astronomer used a 20-centimeter telescope to chronicle the unexpected event, but it could’ve been some kind of visual artifact.
Oh, joy. I hope it doesn’t take an actual catastrophe before the world comes together to get all of our eggs out of this one basket.
Comet P/2016 BA14 was initially thought to be a cosmic lightweight, but as it flew past Earth on March 22, NASA pinged it with radar to reveal just what a heavyweight it really is.
An article for the “Dooms Day” fans.
An asteroid roughly 100 feet long and moving at more than 34,000 mph is scheduled to make a close pass by Earth in two weeks.
But don’t worry, scientists say. It has no chance of hitting us, and may instead help draw public attention to growing efforts at tracking the thousands of asteroids zooming around space that could one day wipe out a city — or worse — if they ever hit our planet.
This one, known as 2016 TX68, is larger than an 18-wheel tractor trailer truck, and is expected to fly as close as 19,245 miles to Earth at 4:06 pm Pacific time on Monday, March 7. For comparison, that’s less than one-tenth as far as the moon is from Earth, or 238,900 miles.
Sooner or later it IS going to happen. All we can do is prepare to defend out planet, whilst making sure we have humans living off-world, somewhere, so that all of our proverbial eggs aren’t in one proverbial basket!
But don’t worry, it won’t hit us.
There’s little data on asteroid 2013 TX68, leaving doomsayers predicting a cataclysmic collision. But the space agency is far less concerned.
NASA’s new Planetary Defense Coordination Office is charged with supervising efforts to plan for potential asteroid threats to Earth.
Blinded by the light of a falling meteor, David has a devastating car accident, leading to a profound discovery: an extra-terrestrial organism that may contain the secret of life itself. When David goes missing for two days, Annabelle searches for her father only to discover him wandering the forest, without so much as a scratch. David’s mysterious reappearance draws the attention of federal authorities and gives Annabelle reason to doubt his sanity. But David has a new sense of purpose, fueled by nightmarish visions. Driven by what he believes is an otherworldly purpose, David must convince Annabelle to believe him and complete his task before government agents can stop him, and before the world destroys itself.
Can there be any doubt any more that colonizing, at minimum, the rest of the solar system is an existential species imperative!?
Most studies of potential Earth-smashers focus on objects in the asteroid belt roughly between Mars, Earth’s outside neighbour, and Jupiter on its other flank, said the researchers.
But they noted that the discovery in the last two decades of hundreds of giant comets dubbed centaurs, albeit with much larger orbits, requires expanding the list of potential hazards.
These balls of ice and dust, typically 50–100 kilometres (31−62 miles) wide, have unstable, elliptical orbits that start way beyond Neptune, the most distant planet from the Sun.
Equal parts interesting and disturbing.
Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers, a new study concludes. An artist’s illustration of a major asteroid impact on Earth. (credit: NASA/Don Davis)
Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers, scientists conclude in a new study published in an open-access paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
For more than 30 years, scientists have argued about a controversial hypothesis relating to periodic mass extinctions and impact craters — caused by comet and asteroid showers — on Earth.