Colossal dead black neo-sphere approaching Earth
A gigantic, spinning, dead black spherical object dubbed YU55 and approximately of the same bulk as a nuclear aircraft carrier is expected to make a close pass by planet Earth on Tuesday night, coming well inside the orbit of the Moon. NEO YU55 imaged by the Arecibo radar telescope. Credit: NASA Looks a bit like that thing from …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Units !
Yet more uncontrolled proliferation of unitage - Get a grip, Reg.
Deathstar
Anyone else see the resemblance? Anyone? ANYONE PLEASE! Get the nukes out arrrrggghhhhh.
New unit of measurement
It seems we have a new UoM. The mass of a Near Earth Objects are measured in terms nuclear aircraft carriers.
YU55, with a NEO with a mass of 1 Gerald R. Ford, will not hit earth.
Mines the one with "Dummy guide to Extinction Events" in the pocket.
Misleading Units
"same bulk as a nuclear aircraft carrier"
Bulk? do they mean mass? or volume? Which nuclear aircraft carrier? What is it in double decker buses or even brontosauruseseseses
FS Charles De Gaulle, 40,600 tons
The Kiev, 42,000 tons
USS Enterprise (CVN-65): 93,500 tons
Nimitz class: 101,000 tons
The Gerald R. Ford is scheduled to join the U.S. Navy’s fleet in 2015 at a displacement of approx 100,000 tons.
No wonder they keep loosing satellites on Mars
Nearly right...
Let's just call it "1 gerald" and be done with it (with extra anorak points for the Blackadder reference).
since my garden pond is too small for a nuclear aircraft carrier, I wonder what that is in bulgarian airbags.
cool
Will we be able to see it?
Although, of course in Blighty at this time of year, cloud cover is a dead cert.
To paraphrase Red Dwarf
You see, the color of space, you basic space color, is black. And the color of YU55, your basic YU55 color, is black. So how are you supposed to see it?
well, if it is close enough
then you may be able to see it during the day (much like you can see the moon during the day)
or if it is sufficiently black, it could pass in front of something that is not black, like the moon......
@Armando 123 didn't I read that scientists had concluded last year that the colour of the universe was beige or possibly magnolia.
Near Earth Object eh?
So
How come the moon is held in orbit by the Earth's gravity, and yet this object of much less density can pass within that orbit and not be affected by. pulled in by, the Earth's Gravity?
Just a thought.
It has to at least be deflected by the gravity effect. I assume it's travelling at a fair speed so will just skim on by....
Theres a NASA animation of it crossing the moons orbit
Looks a little like one of those slow motion bullet films, I think it's fair to say that if it collided with us it would be game over man.
Of course it's affected by Earth's gravity.
It will do a hyperbola around Earth, no problem. As opposed to passing in a straight line.
It's actually impossible to see in the app below, because Earth is not super-massive. If there were no Sun, the hyperbola would be really flat:
If oyu haven't uninstalled Java:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2005%20YU55;orb=1 (Select Center on Earth)
Earth's gravity
It is already being affected by Earth's gravity. Think of it like a rollercoaster, it will roll down one side gathering speed and the up and out of the other side.
Because
The moon wasn't captured by earth, it formed from the stuff that was already floating around earth. Stop me if I get too technical. Most of the crap that was thrown into space when the other planet hit earth actually landed back on earth, some of it flew off into space but only a small amount had the right speed to start orbitting earth. This all formed together and made le moon. Most stuff that approaches us will either collide with us or sod off again. The speed and angle needed for earth to capture another body is quite unlikely, but possible.
If you had a bowling ball in the middle of a trampoline and you start rolling marbles towards it, it's very hard to get the marbles to do a whole orbit around the bowling ball. Obviously friction would stop it from orbitting for any significant period of time, but you get the idea about trajectory and speed from this simple experiment.
Nah
That's not a mass extinction size. From memory, the collision that did for the dinosaurs was of a rock something around 10 miles across, massively larger than the rock we're talking about here. And even that didn't immediately wipe out the dinosaurs, the final extinction was a slower process around the change in the ecosystem that the impact caused.
Still, you probably wouldn't want to try and catch it....
GJC
coooool! So slingshot?
but will it come back in a short while with Scottsman that talks to mice and a pointy eared fellow with crap 80's dress....er I mean robe.... on?
Read a book or two?
a) Of course it is affected by the Earth's gravity, as well the gravity of the Moon, the Sun, and absolutely everything else in the universe that has mass. That includes the dense posts to this forum (electrons have mass before anyone shoots me down).
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation if you slept through physics at school, or went to school after the 1980's when they apparently decided science was too hard and we should all study hotel management.
b) The reason the thing doesn't crash in to your head is because it has too much momentum. If you attached a car to a tree with a really long elastic band (office type) and then drove past the tree at 100mp/h, do you think the car would keep going, the tree would fall over or something else would happen? (Answer: the car would speed up a tiny bit as the elastic band contracted, then slow down a tiny bit as the car starts stretching the band again). Not how gravity works, but a reasonable analogy nonetheless.
Eventually the combined gravitational effects of the Sun, Earth and Moon (plus anything else in the solar system the object passes reasonably near by) might alter its orbit enough that the Earth happens to be in the way when the object is passing by. That is no more the Earth 'pulling the object down' than a sniper's bullet is pulled in to your head. Rather it's case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
All that momentum would be transferred in to radiation(heat/light), sound, bits of rock and bits of you flying off in all directons, plus the earth's orbit and rotation would alter a small amount; vastly less than aforesaid car when a gnat splats on the windscreen.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_momentum
c) No it wouldn't be game over. This object is far to small to have a significant effect. Depending on what it was made from and how fast it was travelling, it would most likely break up in the atmosphere and chunks would hit the ground. There would be an impressive bang and you certainly wouldn't want to be too close to the impact, as tt would leave a crater about a mile wide and a third of a mile deep.
There would be no fireball and if you were (say) 500 miles away, you probably wouldn't even wake up to notice anything had happened. You'd be watching it on the news over your toast if it hit land in an inhabited aread. Most likely it would fall in to the ocean and nobody would even notice.
If you want to play 'End of the world', see: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
Perchance...
it could hit Yellowstone and trigger the supervolcano, then we may have an "end of the world" event.
Re: Near Earth Object eh?
The moon is not held in orbit by the earth's gravity. If you were an alien you would see our world as a dual planet not a single one.
Are you serious?
It's 400m across - well within "Put a Major Hurting on" but well below "Vaporize all of Blighty"
That would depend on it's mass and velocity
As of yet we only know it's 'bulk', which suggests volume. 1 Gerald, to be precise.
That is one good candidate for capture
I say we grab it. Even if it is not a station now , it can become one.
Much more worthy technological goal than the "expedition to Mars" and stuff. If we manage to get it to L1 or L2 between Earth and Moon it will sit nicely there and be 100 time more useful than a moon base.
Aha! Certainly an Inhibitor sphere.
The only question is, does it have Earth's name on it?
Unlikely.
Waaaaaay to slow for an Inhibitor. Way too obvious, too.
And they're only interested in starfaring civilisations; we're quite safe.
"And they're only interested in starfaring civilisations; we're quite safe."
*Now* you're glad NASA canned the space shuttle...
Hmmm
Is Mila Jovovich still qualified for being the 5th Element?
If she is only wearing a few bandages, she'll do fine for me.
Bruce Willis on standby
Now we just need some shuttles, what did we do with those?
Oh shi-
nuclear?
Are nuclear Carriers big compared with normal Carriers?
Bruce Willis on Standby 2
All we need are the Shuttle AND some massive nukes. Better get them prepped. Oh, wait .....
Nuking it a bad idea,
Looks more like the object from a different Bruce Willis film, it'll get bigger if we nuke it.
"Are nuclear Carriers big compared with normal Carriers?"
Yup.
no need to worry
if it comes too close, the UK government will tax it back into orbit (or Cameron will make such a vomit inducing statement about its 'well being' that it will leave by itself).
Definitely not a meteor
How do you know?
Well... er... it's slowing down.
If it starts to slow down as it approaches Earth
Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Delete, delete!
If it's so big and so close, why is the photo so low resolution? Surely a near miss like this is worth training a high orbit satellite on and getting a decent photo?
Or are they scared the public will panic when they see the network of metal surface tunnels and citadels, and the factories of 'spare parts' used by the native inhabitants?
Low resolution because
if they took hi-res pictures they wouldn't have the excuse to spend lots of wonga sending a camera a further away out of the reach of astronaughties.
This topic is closed for new posts.
