Asteroid (Page 13)

Not with the Earth, but with EACH OTHER – X marks the spot: Asteroid impacts have wreaked havoc on this planet in the distant past (as well as probably bringing life here in the first place), but now that we have modern space telescopes, we can see two asteroids colliding with EACH OTHER. Should this worry us?

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has observed a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never been seen before.
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Craters are being found in Australia based on Aboriginal Dreaming Stories, but the Aborigines have been in Australia for around 50,000 years, while the craters are millions of years old. Are the Aborigines actually a far older population, or are the craters younger (or is there another explanation for the discrepancy)?

An Australian astronomer found a huge, bowl-shaped crater by searching Google Earth. But he knew where to look by listening to an Australian Aborigine “Dreaming Story” about a star that had fallen into a waterhole.
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2nd large meteor in 6 weeks. – As if the world wasn’t already dangerous enough: A small asteroid or meteor entered earth’s atmosphere overthe western US Wednesday night, traveling at a surprisinglyhigh speed of about a hundred thousand miles an hour.Theobject exploded with the force of 0.5 to 1 kiloton of TNT.It was so bright that it turned the sky blue. Shock wavesshook the ground from Colorado to Utah when it exploded. Theexplosion took place just after midnight in the area.Although the Leonid meteor shower is underway, the objectwas not part of it.

Six hours after the fireball, noctilucent clouds appeared inthe dawn sky. There had been no reported rocket launches,which may mean that the clouds were connected with the meteor.
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On October 8, an asteroid exploded over Indonesia with the force of a small atomic bomb. This is the same day that earthquakes struck the area. The detonation took place twelve miles up and caused no damage on the ground, but had the object struck the surface it could have easily obliterated a city. Despite the fact that it was nine feet across, the asteroid was not detected at all prior to its entry into our atmosphere. Last week, another substantial asteroid flew past us between the earth and the moon, and was not detected until hours prior to its closest approach. Since July, large impacts have been recorded on Jupiter, in one of the rings of Saturn and possibly on Venus.read more