Earth Catastrophé

Earth Catastrophé
– Ultimately Inevitable? –

Recently a number of popular films have featured stories of Earth Catastrophe involving asteroids. Is the possibility becoming a probability? Read on ...

January 18, 1991, the closest natural object to our planet ever sighted was observed by D Rabinowitz. He, together with J V Scotti, tracked the asteroid for five hours. It was named 1991BA.

The asteroid passed our planet at a distance of only 170,000 km with a relative speed of about 20 km per second. This distance comes into perspective when we remember that our Moon is some 384,000 km (i.e. more than two and a quarter times further away from us than 1991BA was) and that the height of one of our present geostationary satellites is about 36,000 km.

If 1991BA had hit our Earth, traveling at its relative speed of 20 km per second, it would have caused an explosion equivalent to about 40 kilotons of TNT (about three times the Hiroshima atomic bomb).

There are asteroids in similar orbits to 1991BA which are FAR BIGGER; the effects of a collision with ONE of these could be catastrophic for the continuation of civilization or even of human-kind.

Some estimates put the chances of a collision as high as once every 100 years. The most violent recorded collision of an object with the Earth in recent history was the Tunguska event in Siberia in 1908, which devastated 770 sq. miles of forest. (Rumours of nuclear explosion or UFO event have abounded, but fragments of this meteor in the form of magnetite and silicate globules were identified from the area by mineralogist O.A. Kirova).

In October 2002, Siberia experienced another powerful meteor strike (60 miles from Bodaibo) which caused a tremor felt more than 100 miles away, according to the Irkutsk Physics and Geology Institute. (Thank God both the above were in a sparsely populated region).

The

missing factor in most end-of-the-world alarmism is, of course – our Creator.

It is true that our universe is not a friendly place, but our Maker has reached out to us in Jesus and will not withdraw His hand of mercy until ... ...

For those with an interest, asteroid 1991BA's observed elements were:

T = 1991 Mar 2.06	Peri = 70.58	Node = 118.34
i = 1.96 (equinox 1950.0)	q = 0.713 AU	e = 0.682
a = 2.24 AU	– and estimated to be 5-10	metres across.

(Quoted from Information Services Department of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, UK).

An international body, called the Spaceguard Foundation, was established in 1996 in Rome. Its goal is to help protect Earth's environment from the impacts of asteroids and comets by promoting and coordinating discovery programs and physical studies of Near-Earth objects (NEOs).

In the last few years, NASA has convened, at the behest of the US Congress, several working groups in order to plan a system for discovery and characterization of the NEOs.

Most of world's scientific community recognizes the serious possibility of an asteroid or comet impact. However, only very limited funds and resources have been directed towards the effort of finding these objects. The only two active programs involved in this effort are JPL's NEAT program and Spacewatch at the University of Arizona. Both are small-scale efforts with funding levels of less than $500K per year.]

The 400-meter asteroid 99942 Apophis is expected to make a near miss of our planet April 13, 2029.

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