Astronomers discover a massive asteroid that could hit us in 2032

 

Mark August 26th, 2032 on your calendar, folks. Ukrainian astronomers have just detected a 1,350-foot-wide (410 meter) minor planet that’s headed our way. The impact risk is minimal, but it’s now the most serious near-term celestial threat to face our planet.

I tend to shrug off this sort of stuff when I encounter it, but the sheer size of this asteroid, along with its near-term potential, made me curious. So I headed over to NASA’S Near Earth Object Program website to see if it was added it to its Torino Scale — a regularly updated chart that designates asteroid impact risk by category.

Not only was it there, it was at the top of the recently observed list — and all lit up in green, indicating that it's something we should probably keep our eye on.

And indeed, the asteroid, which was initially discovered by astronomers working at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in southern Ukraine, has now been confirmed by other scientists in Italy, Spain, the UK, and Russia’s Siberian republic of Buryatia.

A Torino Scale rating of 1 (out of 10), which is shown in green, indicates an event that "merits careful monitoring." It's described as

A routine discovery in which a pass near the Earth is predicted that poses no unusual level of danger. Current calculations show the chance of collision is extremely unlikely with no cause for public attention or public concern. New telescopic observations very likely will lead to re-assignment to Level 0.

But it is considered potentially hazardous because its orbit will bring it closer than 7.5 million km from Earth’s orbit. In this case, TV135 could come as close as 1.7 million km. Size also matters when it comes to risk assessment. If it were to hit us, it would unleash 2,500 megatons of TNT — 50 times greater than the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated.

The newly discovered asteroid, named 2013 TV135, now joins 2007 VK184 as the only Torino Scale 1 objects known to astronomers. Asteroid VK184, which is 603 feet (184 meters) in diameter, has a 1 in 1,750 chance of hitting the Earth between 2048 to 2075.

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Thankfully, the risk posed by TV135 is extremely low — but not impossibly low. Current best estimates show that it has a 1 in 63,000 chance of colliding with Earth in 2032. That means it has a 99.9984% chance of missing the Earth. This number could either go up or down as new measurements are made over the coming years.

Asteroid defense system, anyone?

[ Source: Ria Novosti | Top image: Artistic impression of an unrelated asteroid via Getty]

IS CHEATING JUSTIFIABLE?

Economist says human wants are limitless but again would we now credit this theory to the rate of cheating in relationship,public offices and religious homes  in recent times?
or would we credit it to the rate at which poverty has taken hold on our economy?
or would we credit it to the rate at which our norms,culture and tradition are been eroded by westernization?
these and many more crept my mind as i write.lets pick on these three point
Human wants
Economic poverty
Westernization
Human wants are limitless,yes we know that but do we now say because wants are limitless then engage in cheating to satisfy our limitless wants?
Economic poverty:the economic situation of a country before all her citizens,not even the rich is exempted.i know some persons might stroke what i just said but believe me,the rich also cries!nothing is absolutely perfect,not even the earth is completely round
Westernization: our norms,cultures and traditions are gradually fallen before our eyes,our people no longer see wrongs in their act of cheating and other forms that goes with it,hence they now see it as a ''normal thing'',a style and a way of life  to them.some call it emancipation,some call it freedom or free will.call it whatsoever name you want but i say its a culture of impunity and waste.i call it EVIL!
what has happened to SELF ESTEEM,DIGNITY,PRIDE,TRUST and TRUTH?
i weep most times when i see the depth at which this EVIL has crept  into our culture,am sure God and our ancestors weeps too at the rate which this evil is going.
have we ever asked ourselves these question...
What legacy are we going to pass to our future generation?
if we cheat this bad,how will next generation and others after it look like?
what about karma and retributive justice laws?
these and many more thoughts flood my mind as none is exempted.the old cheats,the young too,so also in relationships and marriages,boys cheat,girls cheats,even ''virgins'' kpakpa cheats too.who will believe this?
Talking about virgins cheating,let me tell you a short true life story.i once dated a virgin for 5yrs hoping to marry her when she finishes school this year.though there were rough and bad times but we sailed through.recently last year November,i noticed when i went to see her in school,someone mentioned a guy's name.the conversation was like this...''who is this?we don't know any other person apart from '...''a name was called,of which it wasn't mine.we laughed over it but i dint end it there,i kept my ears to the ground until around February 17 ,something suspiciously happened.i got an insider and the truth was revealed.she has been seeing someone in her department by that same name mentioned earlier but i couldn't believe it so i decided to play on and show her more love,hoping with time i will find out it was all lies but her attitude worsened and a second person verified her cheating.this time i couldn't take it anymore as i was disappointed,i backed out.
All these while,i kept thinking,trying to see reasons why a so called virgin would cheat...OK lets try and justify her this way,maybe she wanted a caring loving tall sexy fine and rich guy...at-list lets not add ''good in bed'' because she still a virgin and promise to keep it till marriage[reported speech]. i compared all these,i saw that i and the guy weren't  mate,i was so far ahead.about being rich,although am not yet working with oil companies but I've got something nice doing that can fend for her compare to a departmental date.
 Back from the story,u will find out that everyone has a story to tell on this evil ravaging our culture,economy,public offices,religious homes and all facets of life.leaders involve in mass cheat as public funds are been diverted into personal gains,the list is endless.why don't we try something more challenging by loving ourselves and treat each other the way we want to be treated?that's a million dollar question that will echoes through eternity.....I see greed in their eyes.i see lies,deceit in their lips.i see lust in their heart.i see desperation in their veins.i see cheats in their blood and i see karma befallen them.
In all of these,cheating is no way justifiable neither will human want,economic poverty nor westernization justify any act of cheating.it crumbles a nation.it divides homes,friendship and communal living.it kills economic development and the will to fight for a better world
                                                                                                                                     written by: mercury

Mysterious Ancient Human Crossed Wallace's Line

 

Oct. 17, 2013 — Scientists have proposed that the most recently discovered ancient human relatives -- the Denisovans - somehow managed to cross one of the world's most prominent marine barriers in Indonesia, and later interbred with modern humans moving through the area on the way to Australia and New Guinea.

Three years ago the genetic analysis of a little finger bone from Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains in northern Asia led to a complete genome sequence of a new line of the human family tree -- the Denisovans. Since then, genetic evidence pointing to their hybridisation with modern human populations has been detected, but only in Indigenous populations in Australia, New Guinea and surrounding areas. In contrast, Denisovan DNA appears to be absent or at very low levels in current populations on mainland Asia, even though this is where the fossil was found.
Published today in a Science opinion article, scientists Professor Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide in Australia and Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in the UK say that this pattern can be explained if the Denisovans had succeeded in crossing the famous Wallace's Line, one of the world's biggest biogeographic barriers which is formed by a powerful marine current along the east coast of Borneo. Wallace's Line marks the division between European and Asian mammals to the west from marsupial-dominated Australasia to the east.
"In mainland Asia, neither ancient human specimens, nor geographically isolated modern Indigenous populations have Denisovan DNA of any note, indicating that there has never been a genetic signal of Denisovan interbreeding in the area," says Professor Cooper, Director of the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. "The only place where such a genetic signal exists appears to be in areas east of Wallace's Line and that is where we think interbreeding took place -- even though it means that the Denisovans must have somehow made that marine crossing."
"The recent discovery of another enigmatic ancient human species Homo floresiensis, the so-called Hobbits, in Flores, Indonesia, confirms that the diversity of archaic human relatives in this area was much higher than we'd thought," says Professor Stringer, Research Leader in Human Origins, Natural History Museum, in London. "The morphology of the Hobbits shows they are different from the Denisovans, meaning we now have at least two, and potentially more, unexpected groups in the area.
"The conclusions we've drawn are very important for our knowledge of early human evolution and culture. Knowing that the Denisovans spread beyond this significant sea barrier opens up all sorts of questions about the behaviours and capabilities of this group, and how far they could have spread."
"The key questions now are where and when the ancestors of current humans, who were on their way to colonise New Guinea and Australia around 50,000 years ago, met and interacted with the Denisovans," says Professor Cooper.
"Intriguingly, the genetic data suggest that male Denisovans interbred with modern human females, indicating the potential nature of the interactions as small numbers of modern humans first crossed Wallace's Line and entered Denisovan territory."

New Theory to Explain Seeds of Life in Asteroids

A new look at the early solar system introduces an alternative to a long-taught, but largely discredited, theory that seeks to explain how biomolecules were once able to form inside of asteroids. In place of the outdated theory, researchers propose a new theory -- based on a richer, more accurate image of magnetic fields and solar winds in the early solar system, and a mechanism known as multi-fluid magneto-hydrodynamics -- to explain the ancient heating of the asteroid belt. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Oct. 1, 2013 — A new look at the early solar system introduces an alternative to a long-taught, but largely discredited, theory that seeks to explain how biomolecules were once able to form inside of asteroids. In place of the outdated theory, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute propose a new theory -- based on a richer, more accurate image of magnetic fields and solar winds in the early solar system, and a mechanism known as multi-fluid magneto-hydrodynamics -- to explain the ancient heating of the asteroid belt.

---

Although today the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is cold and dry, scientists have long known that warm, wet conditions, suitable to formation of some biomolecules, the building blocks of life, once prevailed. Traces of bio-molecules found inside meteorites -- which originated in the asteroid belt -could only have formed in the presence of warmth and moisture. One theory of the origin of life proposes that some of the biomolecules that formed on asteroids may have reached the surfaces of planets, and contributed to the origin of life as we know it.
"The early sun was actually dimmer than the sun today, so in terms of sunlight, the asteroid belt would have been even colder than it is now. And yet we know that some asteroids were heated to the temperature of liquid water, the 'goldilocks zone,' which enabled some of these interesting biomolecules to form," said Wayne Roberge, a professor of physics within the School of Science at Rensselaer, and member of the New York Center for Astrobiology, who co-authored a paper on the subject with Ray Menzel, a graduate student in physics. "Here's the question: How could that have happened? How could that environment have existed inside an asteroid?"
In the paper, titled "Reexamination of Induction Heating of Primitive Bodies in Protoplanetary Disks" and published today in The Astrophysical Journal, Menzel and Roberge revisit and refute one of two theories proposed decades ago to explain how asteroids could have been heated in the early solar system. Both of the established theories -- one involving the same radioactive process that heats the interior of Earth, and the other involving the interaction of plasma (super-heated gases that behave somewhat like fluids) and a magnetic field -- are still taught to students of astrobiology. Although radioactive heating of asteroids was undoubtedly important, current models of radioactive heating make some predictions about temperatures in the asteroid belt that are inconsistent with observations.
Motivated by this, Roberge and Menzel reviewed the second of the two theories, which is based on an early assessment of the young sun and the premise that an object moving through a magnetic field will experience an electric field. According to this theory, as an asteroid moves through the magnetic field of the solar system, it will experience an electric field, which will in turn push electrical currents through the asteroid, heating the asteroid in the same way that electrical currents heat the wires in a toaster.
"It's a very clever idea, and the mechanism is viable, but the problem is that they made a subtle error in how it should be applied, and that's what we correct in this paper," said Roberge. "In our work, we correct the physics, and also apply it to a more modern understanding of the young solar system."
Menzel said the researchers have now definitively refuted the established theory.
"The mechanism requires some extreme assumptions about the young solar system," Menzel said. "They assumed some things about what the young sun was doing which are just not believed to be true today. For example, the young sun would have had to produce a powerful solar wind which blew past the asteroids, and that's just no longer believed to be true."
The solar wind, and the plasma stream it produced, was not as powerful as early theorists assumed, and the researchers have corrected those calculations based on the current understanding of the young sun. Roberge said the early theorists also incorrectly calculated the position of the electric field asteroids would have experienced. Roberge said that, in reality, an electric field would have permeated the asteroid and the space around it, a mistake very few researchers would have realized.
"We've calculated the electric field everywhere, including the interior of the asteroid," Roberge said. "How that electric field comes about is a very specialized thing; about 10 people in the world study that kind of physics. Fortunately, two of them are here at RPI working together."
What emerges, Menzel and Roberge said, is a new possibility, based on the corrected understanding of the electric fields the asteroids would have experienced, the solar wind and plasma conditions that would have prevailed, and a mechanism known as multi-fluid magneto-hydrodynamics.
Magneto-hydrodynamics is the study of how charged fluids -- including plasmas -- interact with magnetic fields. The magnetic fields can influence the motion of the charged fluid, or plasma, and vice versa. Magneto-hydrodynamics had a moment of fame as the propulsion system for an experimental nuclear submarine in the 1990 movie The Hunt for Red October.
Multi-fluid magneto-hydrodynamics are an even more specialized variation of the mechanism that apply in situations where the plasma is very weakly ionized, and the neutral particles behave distinctly from the charged particles.
"The neutral particles interact with the charged particles by friction," Menzel said. "So this creates a complex problem of treating the dynamics of the neutral gas and allowing for the presence of the small number of charged particles interacting with the magnetic field."
Menzel and Roberge said their new theory is promising, but it raises many questions that merit further exploration.
"We're just at the beginning of this. It would be wrong to assert that we've solved this problem," Roberge said. "What we've done is to introduce a new idea. But through observations and theoretical work, we know have a pretty good paradigm."
And much as Menzel and Roberge benefited from recent progress in understanding the physical conditions in an emerging planetary system, they hope their own work will advance the field of astrophysics.
"There are a lot of byproducts of this work because, in the course of doing this, we had to really zero in on how an asteroid interacts with the plasma of the young solar system," said Roberge. "There are a lot of physical processes that we had to consider that have not been considered in this context before

Plastics found in space

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, a chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other consumer products, on Saturn’s moon Titan.

This is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than Earth. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN0SbMeOGIA&feature=player_embedded#t=0
A small amount of propylene was identified in Titan’s lower atmosphere by Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS). This instrument measures the infrared light, or heat radiation, emitted from Saturn and its moons in much the same way our hands feel the warmth of a fire.
Propylene is the first molecule to be discovered on Titan using CIRS. By isolating the same signal at various altitudes within the lower atmosphere, researchers identified the chemical with a high degree of confidence. Details are presented in a paper in the Sept. 30 edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene,” said Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the paper. “That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom — that’s polypropylene.”
CIRS can identify a particular gas glowing in the lower layers of the atmosphere from its unique thermal fingerprint. The challenge is to isolate this one signature from the signals of all other gases around it.
The detection of the chemical fills in a mysterious gap in Titan observations that dates back to NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft and the first-ever close flyby of this moon in 1980.
Voyager identified many of the gases in Titan’s hazy brownish atmosphere as hydrocarbons, the chemicals that primarily make up petroleum and other fossil fuels on Earth.
On Titan, hydrocarbons form after sunlight breaks apart methane, the second-most plentiful gas in that atmosphere. The newly freed fragments can link up to form chains with two, three or more carbons. The family of chemicals with two carbons includes the flammable gas ethane. Propane, a common fuel for portable stoves, belongs to the three-carbon family.
Voyager detected all members of the one- and two-carbon families in Titan’s atmosphere. From the three-carbon family, the spacecraft found propane, the heaviest member, and propyne, one of the lightest members. But the middle chemicals, one of which is propylene, were missing.
As researchers continued to discover more and more chemicals in Titan’s atmosphere using ground- and space-based instruments, propylene was one that remained elusive. It was finally found as a result of more detailed analysis of the CIRS data.
“This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene’s weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals,” said Michael Flasar, Goddard scientist and principal investigator for CIRS. “This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan’s atmosphere.”
Cassini’s mass spectrometer, a device that looks at the composition of Titan’s atmosphere, had hinted earlier that propylene might be present in the upper atmosphere. However, a positive identification had not been made.
“I am always excited when scientists discover a molecule that has never been observed before in an atmosphere,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini’s deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “This new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan’s atmosphere.”
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The CIRS team is based at Goddard.

HOW DID WE GET HERE!

HOW DID WE GET HERE!

Dealing with a psychopathic political class can be so nightmarish.

the masses are fast becoming like flies caught up in the web of hopelessness.

There use to be a weird saying ''if you cant beat them,you join them but that of our country has been modified to ''if you cant beat them then you cant join them.

A country where you don't get caught for stealing,you only get punish for not belonging to the class of those legalize to steal.

The political class are so galvanize, they quarrel but they don't hit themselves.they fight but they don't punch themselves.

A class where a governor was seen mocking a female teacher who couldn't read her affidavit  but has forgotten to mock the system that produce her and her result.

How did we get here??????

The fear of a political cataclysm is anchored on a culture of waste,impunity, cruelness and vagary.

The ruling class are seen celebrating birthdays for days,weeks and months but has completely forgotten the reason,essence of his birth.a vast wastage indeed!

The President was seen expressing hopelessness on his speech while declaring open the 54th annual conference of the Nigerian Economic Society in Abuja on Tuesday 17th sept.

The President  said “ When you talk about corruption, the private sector is involved; the public sector is involved; even  individuals. But I wouldn’t want to mention names so that I will not be attacked..''

if Mr president,the commander in chief of all arm forces,a man that has sworn to uphold the law,a man whom we all hope on for a better Nigerian has shy away from truth,justice,equity and he is scared of being attack...hmm i wonder what the common masses will do! #thinking

When those in power grant pardon to economic offenders, when our courts(judiciary) settle corrupt cases through plea-bargain, etc, does it not also amount to celebrating Corruption? what is actually going on in this country? whom are we  deceiving? why have we sold shame in the market place? How come Integrity has eloped  this country??
The political leaders feeds fat at the detriment of its followers,to whom do we now seek refuge??
The RELIGIOUS LEADER?
these set of people are vicious  fundamentalist with unbridled ambition.they accumulate wealth from sheep whom come seeking safe heaven.they hold series of  meetings, and all sort of jamborees even in working days to further en-mass their greed. the latest is purchasing of private jets and expensive cars,they say its to make Gods work easier but i believe its a means to an end.
all these are indices of a failed nation.
i think its high time Nigerians tell themselves the truth today as we mark our 53th yr of independence,

In times of war,truth is an expensive commodity cascaded by honey of lies,thus...the abyss of destruction is  inevitable.
God bless you,God bless the federal republic of Nigeria!

Almost 1,000 alien planets dicovered

Just two decades after discovering the first world beyond our solar system, astronomers are closing in on alien planet No. 1,000.
Four of the five main databases that catalog the discoveries of exoplanets  now list more than 900 confirmed alien worlds, and two of them peg the tally at 986 as of today (Sept. 26). So the 1,000th exoplanet may be announced in a matter of days or weeks, depending on which list you prefer.
That's a lot of progress since 1992, when researchers detected two planets orbiting a rotating neutron star, or pulsar, about 1,000 light-years from Earth. Confirmation of the first alien world circling a "normal" star like our sun did not come until 1995. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]

And the discoveries will keep pouring in, as astronomers continue to hone their techniques and sift through the data returned by instruments on the ground and in space.
The biggest numbers in the near future should come from NASA's Kepler space telescope, which racked up many finds before being hobbled in May of this year when the second of its four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed.
Kepler has identified 3,588 planet candidates to date. Just 151 of these worlds have been confirmed so far, but mission scientists have said they expect at least 90 percent will end up being the real deal.
But even these numbers, as impressive as they are, represent just the tip of our Milky Way galaxy's immense planetary iceberg. Kepler studied a tiny patch of sky, after all, and it only spotted planets that happened to cross their stars' faces from the instrument's perspective.
Many more planets are thus out there, zipping undetected around their parent stars. Indeed, a team of researchers estimated last year that every Milky Way star hosts, on average, 1.6 worlds — meaning that our galaxy perhaps harbors 160 billion planets.
And those are just the worlds with obvious parent stars. In 2011, a different research team calculated that "rogue planets" (which cruise through space unbound to a star) may outnumber "normal" exoplanets by 50 percent or so.

Nailing down the numbers is of obvious interest, but what astronomers really want is a better understanding of the nature and diversity of alien worlds.
And it's becoming more and more apparent that this diversity is stunning. Scientists have found exoplanets as light and airy as Styrofoam, for example, and others as dense as iron. They've also discovered a number of worlds that appear to orbit in their stars' habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could support the existence of liquid water and thus, perhaps, life as we know it.
But the search continues for possibly the biggest exoplanet prize: the first true alien Earth. Kepler was designed to determine how frequently Earth-like exoplanets occur throughout the Milky Way, and mission scientists have expressed confidence that they can still achieve that primay goal. So some Earth analogs likely lurk in Kepler's data, just waiting to be pulled out.
The five chief exoplanet-discovery databases, and their current tallies, are: the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (986); the Exoplanets Catalog, run by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo's Planetary Habitability Laboratory (986); the NASA Exoplanet Archive (905); the Exoplanet Orbit Database (732); and the Open Exoplanet Catalog (948).
The Planetary Habitability Lab keeps track of all five databases, whose different numbers highlight the uncertainties involved in exoplanet detection and confirmation.