Want to make sure you’re well prepped for what could be the final party on the planet? Keep up to date with the impending armageddon with the Asteroid Watch widget from Nasa.gov.
JPL’s Asteroid Watch Widget tracks asteroids and comets that will make relatively close approaches to Earth. The Widget displays the date of closest approach, approximate object diameter, relative size and distance from Earth for each encounter. The object’s name is displayed by hovering over its encounter date. Clicking on the encounter date will display a Web page with details about that object.
The Widget displays the next five Earth approaches to within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers or 19.5 times the distance to the moon); an object larger than about 150 meters that can approach the Earth to within this distance is termed a potentially hazardous object.
If this is too much for you, you can follow the Twitter which is a bit more selective and doesn’t notify you of every passerby, just the ones that are likely to kill us all.
This discussion currently has 6 responses.
July 29, 2009
Here’s something to make you sleep better at night:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090720-jupiter-spot-impact-picture.html
So there this was something that plunged into Jupiter which was large enough to leave a whole in it nearly as big as our planet and nobody saw it coming. Nifty picture.
July 30, 2009
Yeah I saw this over at physOrg.com the other day. That scar is awesome. That’s two big ones for Jupiter in a decade.
July 30, 2009
Oh I have added this, love this shit, along with my LHC updates.
from the book I am presently reading:
“If Jupiter did not exist in our solar system, Earth would be pelted with meteors and comets, making life impossible. … without the presence of Jupiter or Saturn in our solar system, the Earth would have suffered a thousand times more asteroid collisions, with huge life-threatening impact (like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago) occuring every ten thousand years.”
-Michio Kaku “Physics of the Impossible”
July 30, 2009
Whoever wrote this is correct. Jupiter is like a giant vacuum cleaner or sponge that saves us all from a lot of punishment.
Damn I wish I finished my degree.
August 2, 2009
One glance at our moon tells a similar tale (not to mention the other effects it has on everything Terran).
August 2, 2009
That’s true. Though Earth would look about the same (probably worse) if it weren’t for our kick ass atmosphere.