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Meteorite Strikes Indian Village
PS writes "The BBC is reporting that a village in eastern India was struck by a meteorite Saturday evening, wrecking several houses and injuring about twenty people. Fortunately, no one appears to have been killed by the impact or subsequent fires. CNN suggests that a second village near the impact site may have also been struck by part of the meteorite." Human/meteorite encounters are not entirely unheard of.
Oh no, the sky is falling, the sky is falling! :)
I can't believe Slashdot fell for such lies! .... X-files?
Have you missed the ground-shaking documentary called
Had you watched even parts of this research project you would know that this was a UFO crash site , cleverly disguised as a meteor crash.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
A meteorite that hits outside the United States!! So the movies are inaccurate after all... you know, like how ID4, Deep Impact, etc. always seems to have outer space stuff hitting the States. ;)
Was it running Linux?
Its eastern India. Please Read article first. The article also goes on to say that the only living creature to be harmed by a meteor in recorded history was an Egyptian Dog which had the misfortune to be at the wrong place at the wrong time :-) . This happened in 1911 BTW.
--> Your Wisecrack Here
Is that the aliens using the Earth as a giant bongo drum?
So this rock that terrified all these multitudes of people.. was so small it took out, practically nothing? lol WOw, slow news day.
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
...as long as grass doesn't start growing around the meteorite.
"I, for one, welcome our new meteorite overlords."
BBC: "At least 20 people are reported to have been injured after a meteorite crashed to Earth in eastern India."
Brief summary after the headline.
It's eastern India. not western India. Does any one verify any stories over here?
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
After all, he's running out of things to smite people with...
He trys lighting and oops, lighting rods.
Then plague, antibiotics! Damm it!
Famine, damm it, they are flying in lobsters from Maine.
He had to resort the to old fire and brimstone.
Does anyone know if there are any charities accepting aid money yet? It would be nice to help.
At least after this mess is cleaned up, they will have something to tell the tourists. They can take solace in the fact that they aren't the new meteor crater.
Dependable, Reliable Furnishings
if meteor strikes in the real world look really like the ones in Armageddon? Fiery, a smoky trail, and everything bounces when they hit the ground...
Look at the colorful map courtesy of BBC. Orissa is clearly on the right side of the map!
Oh Bruce, Where Arth Thou?
welcome our meteorite overlords, and would like to remind them that as a trusted hindu diety I could be useful in rounding up other hindus to toil away in their underground space mines.
It was just another UN Resolution getting shot down
A meteorite of not much larger mass could have caused far more widespread destruction. I could be off on my facts here, but I remember reading about a similar event taking place in Russia, devastating several many acres of open forest. Should it have impacted a city, the city would have been leveled. Granted we're all familiar with the meteorite impact apocalypse prospect, all I'm saying is it could be worse. I wonder how many other life forms or even civilizations have evolved on other planets that were completely obliterated because of stellar impacts. Something to fear.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
...you're new here, aren't you?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
super powers from the meteorite yet? =D
--------
Free your mind.
whose only talents are eating, shitting, and breeding.
And writing software.
..a US senators house? Would NASA's funding for astroid impact studies double?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I thought the US government had hired Bruce Willis to take care of these meteorite thingies? Did he not manage to blow this one up in time? If not, did he survive the impact? Please, I need to know if Bruce is gonna be ok!!?!
.. then there was a tornado, and a flying saucer, and even a giant robot smashing the vast ammounts of constructions of huts, the mayor was reportedly quoted as saying "weaknesspays" as he rebuilds the village into a vast empire.
Flooding, earthquakes in Japan, drought, giant hurricanes on the east coast, fire... and now meteors devastating small villages.
I'm kidding about the end of the world, but has it seemed to anyone else that there's been an unusually high occurance of natural disaster in the last year or so? Maybe it's just me.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Official NASA statement:
"Oops."
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
I read in the local paper (link about half way down - reg required) that the same thing also happened in New Orleans this week. The meteorite, which looked like a snady colored rock containing minerals commonly found in meteorites (tested at Tulane University) punched a hole through Ray Fausset's roof and two floors before coming to rest in the crawl space beneath the house, as reported.
...hope it landed on an outsourced call center.
The stainless steel artificial knee of Harry S. Stamper was found just two miles from the point of impact . . .
Hint: Rockhound had to take me to Taipei to buy some Tampax(R) and then he had to show me how to use them.
Yes I have no life
This just in: meteor misses sacred cow....film at 11.
Wow! Imagine if that had hit a beowulf cluster.
AT&ROFLMAO
i hate ann coulter.
Oh, come on. You're a Slashdot geek. I know you'd do her if you had the chance.
This comes just a couple of years after the flood in Orissa. Wonder what the Orissans have done to piss off Jesus/Allah/Krishna so much?
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
I hope everyone realises that if this had struck Iraq and had "Made in Amnerika" stamped on the side the media would be calling this a liberation.
India/United States
Poplutaion:1,014,003,817 / 275,562,673
Area (sq. Km):2,973,190 / 9,166,601
Density (persons per sq Km):341.0 / 30.1
always seems to have outer space stuff hitting the States
There is a lot of stuff hitting US.
But with such a hight density population it's more easy that a meteor hits a village in India than a American one.
The only recorded fatality from a meteor was an Egyptian dog that had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time in 1911. Seven decades later, scientists recognised the dog had been struck by a meteorite from Mars.
poor doggie
I just wonder how they knew in 1911 what it was that hit him.
Okay, before everyone else posts one of those stupid Slashdot in-jokes... Please post them as replies to this post.
In Soviet Russia, all your asteroid are belong to India!
Imagine a beowulf meteor shower of naked and petrified Natalie Portmans Slashdotting India!
"Where's the BitTorrent link?"
and last but not least...
Darl McBride: "We have good evidence that Indian villagers are stealing our intellectual property to the UNIX system encoded in million-year-old rocks... evidence will be presented shortly. In Sanskirt."
Somebody call Bruce Willis, quick!
The name of the east Indian village translates as "Smallville".
-- Alastair
We're being hit by tennis ball sized meteors/meteorites(not sure which one is valid syntax in this case :/) all the time. They don't really do much unless they hit someone.
This meteorite in particular was probably 30cm wide or so, that's quite a lot, actually.
At least I can get behind outsourcing natural disasters. I'm sure other folks won't like it though.
Ugh. Tracking Everything? Ya right, if we still find texas sized objects that will end up flying within an astronomically small distance from earth in the next Decade, or Century for that matter, than there is no doubt there are things the size of a Volkswagon that are going to come very close to or hit earth and we have no idea yet. We can track all the space garbage and junk debris orbiting earth, but when a small or even large object moving at 64,000 mph (random number) is going to hit us, than it might never even show up on that "tracking" that NASA does of the earth orbit space debris. I mean seriously. You expect them to see something that was probably the size of a Volkswagon bug out there in space when its moving that fast? Theres a chance, but its slim. Although not as improbable as NASA being able to track "everything". Thats just downright crazy to assume at this point.
There is NO way currently to track all the stuff that size in the solar system.
So in fact, it is quite possible that a dinosaur-killer could hit New York tomorrow and wipe us all out, and we would have NO warning. Thank your government for their lack of foresight for that.
I guess IT jobs aren't the only thing heading to India now!
More proof, if proof be needed, that NASA are nought but a bunch of posers.
You thought wrong.
Nearly everything in low Earth orbit is tracked, because of the threat to satellites and manned spacecraft. But no organization has the resources set aside to track everything in the solar system.
If you want to try finding every rock the size of a beach ball in the entire volume of the solar system, be my guest.
You really haven't been paying attention, have you?
The standard cliche is that the number of people looking for these things is smaller than the number of people working at your average McDonald's. You want these rocks found, you convince your government to spend the money to do it.
Firstly, it was an asteroid, not a "meter".
Secondly, we got swamped with that news because the media is stupid.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Human/meteorite encounters are not entirely unheard of.
Here's a documentry of the aftermath of a more serious encounter.DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
ok6 villagers got trampled by a wild herd of journalists and scientists rushing to the place of accident.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I was at the Field Museum this past week and got a real kick out of the meteor exhibits. They had several large metalic meteors that were out in the open free to touch. Putting my hand on it and thinking about it flying though space, to be rudely blocked by the planet earth. It wasn't it's fault that there was some stupid planet in the way... Anyway, they also had several examples of meteorites hitting houses. In once case it went through the guys garage, through his car and bounced off the cars muffler, ending up sitting on the car seat. Another one took out a guys gutter. The pictures are pretty funny, all the guys looked pretty pissed off, but it was in the 20s or 30s, maybe people didn't smile back then.
Field Museum Meteor collection
It's pretty sneaky and dishonest how they make these revisions without an Update tag, or updating the timestamp.
Thus, it looks like those that complained were delusional or mistaken, when it was really the idiotic editor's fault.
It's no surprise to find that michael was the editor of this story. He is truly a despicable and untrustworthy character.
Why, it's Union Carbide! Haha, take that, jobtakeing Indian scumbags.
For those of us who know we don't have the facts straight, could you enlighten us on how much a many is?
I forget what 8 was for.
Seven decades later, scientists recognised the dog had been struck by a meteorite from Mars.
I'd be careful not to piss off any Martians. Wonder what the dog did to them...
Here I am thinking NASA & co was tracking everyhing bigger than a tennis ball in outer space. How come this thing just goes in without anyone noticing it?
... and by ... 'The Department of Homeland Security: Your safety is important to us. Now, stop asking hard questions.'"
Space is big. It's impossible to track everything bigger then a tennis ball. NASA does try to track some objects that are in orbit, but they NASA never claimed to be tracking "everything".
We've been swamped with news of some other meter which had like a 1^-1000000 chance to hit and this thing just charges in?
Don't confuse NASA with the Media coverage of NASA. NASA has reported other important finds which were not covered by the media. This one story was blown out of proportion.
The media thinks you're obsessed with the OJ Simpson trial, Ben & Jen, Laci Peterson, Princess Di, etc.
"This post was brought to you by 'McDonalds: Our Food tastes horrible and makes you fat, but it's cool!'
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
First of all, neither NASA, nor anyone else at the moment, has the capability to track "everyhing bigger than a tennis ball in outer space". That would number in the trillions, if not many, many, many orders of magnitude more. Current tracking systems handle all the junk in Earth orbit, and anything HUGE that we've picked up *so far*.
As for why we get news of something with a remote chance of hitting Earth - that's because these objects are typically hundreds, if not thousands of metres across. If one of these hit, it would kill millions of people, and possibly wipe out most macroscopic life as we know it. That's why you hear about them.
What landed in India was a few inches across at best, or you wouldn't see "20 people injured, no deaths". And detecting even a tiny fraction of the things in space at that size is well nigh impossible. Meteors of this size hit the planet all the time, but almost always land in remote areas.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
If the meteorite was running Linux, there would have been far fewer injuries. For all industrial grade, mission critical meteorite applications, there is no other alternative.
When will people run that Windows XP is a shitty OS???
Does this mean that those villagers will have more magic-meteor-stones like the one on Temple of Doom?
Some years ago I saw a special on PBS about a small town near Chicago that was also wiped out by fire, with great loss of life, on the same day as the great chicago fire. Reports of the small town's destruction via firestorm sounded very much like a sub-atomic blast (whose effects would be very similar to a comet or meteorite strike). I was struck by the coincidence and still wonder about the natural conclusion. Anyone else see the program or know the town's name? I came up empty on Google, but don't know what query to ask. (The answer must be 42)
Obviously, you've never seen "Armageddon." ...not that you should.
Nobody tell that fucker Bruckheimer. The last thing we need is a sequel.
Also, meteors, despite movies, do not set fires, because when they finally impact something on the earth they are typically really cold.
Well, unless it was the EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT. But then the story would be "india found to be missing".
Looks like a cheap play for some publicity.
"Fortunately, the remaining fragments of the meteorite have already been sold for 65 million dollars on eBay, which the local populance has agreed to split evenly. A month long drunken celebration has been scheduled to begin October 1st and everyone's invited."
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Nor will anyone bother to develop one until itis too late, i.e. it has hit somewhere populous in the US or Western Europe, by which time it is much too late. Imagine if this thing had hit a towerblock in London, or an apartment complex in New York, possibly killing or injuring hundreds?
I only hope the wake up call isn't also the big bad one
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
As of 6:30 PM Eastern Time (Sun Sept 28th), there is no mention of the meteorite strike in any major newspaper/news-website in India.
:)
The cnn article quotes its source as PTI (Press Trust of India) but their website itself (www.ptinews.com) doesn't mention any such thing...
Maybe the Indian media is in deep slumber
Really says something about the American people if these guys can take all their jobs and perform them cheaper and better, huh?
Who said better (asides from you)?
I found it:
Oct. 8-14, 1871: Peshtigo, Wisconsin: over 1,500 lives lost and 3.8 million acres burned in nation's worst forest fire. Cause Unknown
Peshtigo is about 130 miles due north of Chicago.
Same day as the great Chicago fire.
damn...i pushed too hard to get it out.
Er, hello, has anyone seen our bluetooth-controlled homebrew robot. It was kinda zooming along when it sorta flew out of range (ie more than 5m away from us) when Joe, who was controlling it, dropped the RC when his Segway sorta 'bucked' for no apparent reason and he was thrown to the floor (weird that--anyone else had this happen to them?). We think one of its methanol power cells might be leaking too so stand well back if it comes your way 'cos Joe says it might take off with a 'whoosh' and behave sorta like an ion propulsion drive--who knows where the damn thing may land.
If you see our robot, please email us. Don't try instant messaging us cos our copy of Trillian seems to have stopped working and our Cingular GSM cell phone seems to be dead too (weird that--anyone else had this happen to them?)
Joe reckons all our comms breaking down has something to do with our uni campus being built under a power line so he's off to put his foil hat back on, but I did notice our Ukranian lab assistant wandering around with a hammer just now and I was a little suspicious when he asked me if I had any old hardware I didn't want, and I'm sure 'deztroy' isn't the name of his home town, as he claimed.
Keep your eyes open for us. Thanks.
PS: Why is Darl gonna present his evidence 'sanskirt' - is he a cross-dresser? Does he like to be called Darlene out of business hours?
AT&ROFLMAO
I mean really, really big.
Bigger than an Olympic sized swimming pool. Bigger than a football field. Bigger even than a San Francisco, which is the largest unit that the human mind can comprehend.
Do you think that NASA can track every object in San Francisco? No, of course not. Even the fedral Narcs haven't figured out how to do that yet (although they're working on it).
Right now, just out beyond Pluto, there could be some whacked out ex-groupie of Wavy Gravy plummeting toward earth in her rusty old VW Microbiotic bus and we won't even know until it takes out Kansas.
Just hope she isn't driving uninsured. Old hippies do shit like that. They think it's some sort of political statement or something.
Anyway, the point is, space is big. Shit happens. Don't worry, be happy. You won't even feel a thing.
KFG
With the ongoing cold war between India and Pakistan, the Indian military might well have shot first, and asked questions later, causing a small nuclear war, and a much greater loss of life than the initial meteorite.
The Almighty just had bad inteligence reports from the US National Security Advisor that India had Weapons of Mass Destruction stored there.
Either that or God missed.
Stupid Space Rock. I blame America.
I thought NORAD were the people chartered with tracking all the Space junk. So they know what is up there in case a nuke was lauched they would know what was what. I also remember seeing something on TV about only being able to really monitor 1% of the sky for stuff like this. I wonder if they did see this and didn't want to cause a panic.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
... We're lucky, guys; had this thing landed in a village in western India (or worse, in Cashmere), India would have blamed Pakistan for the strike and they would be merrily nuking each other right now...
Pheeew!
Seriously though, those guys are really, really, really out of luck!!
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
our new meteorite overlords.
When Hillary will blame this on Bush?
Even Homer Simpson knows they burn up in the atmosphere - the only bit that lands is the size of a chihuahua's head...
With sufficient acceleration one basketball-size meteoride can inflict far more damage than a 9/11-style terrorist attack.
I always thought he looked like Yosemite Sam.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
In other news, it turns out that the Galileo had been orbiting the Earth all of this time and not Jupiter, unbeknownst to NASA scientists. Several scientists and engineers have been put on paid leave and funding is being reviewed.
President Bush has vowed to seek out and capture the space terrorists who caused this destruction. Dr. Fred Edison, Nurse Edna Edison, and Weird Ed Edison, he's looking your way.
When India and pakistan were on the brink of war last year, the worry ofUS and many others was that an incident like this (on a larger scale ofcourse) would be mistaken for a missile strike, thus leading to an all out nuclear war. So, not only is it good that nobody was killed by the meteor, its also better that it happened at a much less tense time.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
It would have been pleasing if the meteor would have hit Bangalore and all the other IT offshoring locations and turned them into smoking craters.
Of course, it would be even better if it hit some CIO/CEO's homes/offices in the US/UK/Australia/etc. Unpatriotic assholes turning great nations into 3rd world cesspools. If they have their way, all the cities of America will be like New York, as depicted in the movie Soylent Green.
Is an "ear spitting" noise one that causes your ears to spew wax? Eeew.
30cm? Couldn't be. That's way bigger than a chihauhau's head...
There's actually not much point in trying to track all these objects. A lot of them are in eccentric orbits (like comets) and thus untrackable most of the time. The rest are no threat because they're in regular orbits that don't interesect ours. The ones that were in intersection orbits got swept up a very long time ago -- that's how planets are formed. The danger comes when these orbits change, after being disturbed by interaction with another object. So if we every get serious about looking out for killer asteroids, we won't try to track every one we already know about -- we'll just keep a general watch for new objects or old objects in new orbits.
Also, really small objects are no threat, because they burn up in the atmosphere. Objects big enough to punch through do hit pretty often, but I've never heard of anybody getting hurt by one. Which I guess indicates that we're not as big a planetary feature as we like to think, and also explains why there's such a short memory for these events. As indicated by the attention the Indian impacts are getting.
More common is damage to buildings and machinery. Speaking of which, if you find that your car has had a hole punched in it by something falling from the sky, do not get it repaired until you've determined the cause -- here are collectors who pay good money for cars with meteorite damage. But don't plan your retirement before you've made sure it's not just blue ice.
Not quite fair. It's not the media's fault that most people know jack about astronomy, and can't distinguish a harmless rock from a killer asteroid. Which is pretty important. Armageddon-style planet killers are rarer than intelligent Hollywood movies, but some scientists think that rocks big enough to wipe out a city happen every 100 years. And in fact, it's been almost that long since the Tunguska event. Which, alas, most people know about mainly from watching The X Files.That evil meteor is at it again! Where is Bernard, Laverne and Hoagie when you need them?
Hundreds!?!!? Oh my God!!! It's a good thing we don't have fires anymore, that earthquakes are completely predictable so no one ever dies in those. It's also good we can stop hurricanes off our shores, and 15,000 people don't die in heat waves anymore. So, yeah, now is the time to really get to work on solving a problem that hasn't killed a single person in recorded history.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
...Planet X is coming.
Un-news
I am not an expert on this subject, though I played one on TV (really... but that's a long story). I know enough about meteorites to be a little dangerous.
Though the CNN article credits Press Trust of India, a search on PTI's site found nothing (for me at least).
When the articles talked about burning fragments, it didn't ring true. So, I went to Google to do a little quick research.
Except for those really huge impacts, smaller meteorites are relatively slow movers in the lower reaches of the atmosphere and lose their heat rather quickly. Let me steal some work from:
Date: Mon Nov 30 23:28:41 1998
Posted By: Robert Macke, Grad student, Physics, Washington University
Area of science: Astronomy
If you have a baseball-sized meteorite of density 3.2 g/cc, using a value of 1.2 kg/m^3 for the density of air, you will find that the meteorite will slow from its approach velocity of roughly 11000 meters per second to its terminal velocity of 60 m/s in a mere 28 seconds, having traveled only 3 km. (By comparison, the speed of sound is roughly 315 m/s.) It then spends another 100 mins or so falling before it hits the ground, giving it ample time to cool down below its original temperature it gained during entry into the atmosphere. (At 60 m/s, it's moving like a fastball, but not much more. It'll still cause a lot of damage if your car or house is in the way, but it wouldn't start a fire or create any appreciable crater. It would probably be a bit warm to the touch.
Any learned assistance would be appreciated. I'm not adverse to being shown to be wrong in a subject that I have little more than passing knowledge.
I'm based in Melbourne, Australia at the moment, 9:33 pm on Saturday I saw a green light streaking across the sky dropping orange sparks, it was very cool. I'm thinking I might have seen the meteorite in question before it met Earth.
...as the French and American researchers ask "Where did it come from?" ;-)
I clicked the link to this article expecting a discussion about a meteor defense system, how much would it cost, how long would it take to build it, and even if it is feasible, how do we get to build it in a divided world who can't even build a punny space station.
Instead I find all top comments are "+5, Funny". And that in a site inhabited by some of the most technically capable people in the world. No wonder our politics will never grasp the need for such a project. Maybe it is just a Sunday effect, but I can't help wondering if the species who will use us as fossil fuel will manage to use their time better.
If this happened in the US, 1) they would at first blame it in terrorists, 2) It would be on CNN for days, 3) Yet another "amageddon" movie would be made about it, or at least a made-for-tv crappy movie, and 4) People would protest demanding more protectiong...
But... this happened in india, so nobody cared...
Tomorrow there will be a mudslide that wipes out 400 people looking for survivors of the meteor. And then the monkey man will show up.
1^-1000000 = 1/1^1000000 = 1/1 = 1
He he he....
The proper term is "Native American" jerkoff!
Any chance that village's name is Smallville?
As some of you may recall, Orissa was the state in which the Australian Missionary Steines and his two minor sons were burnt alive by radicals.
Soon after that, there was severe flooding in Orissa, killing hundreds and displacing thousands.
Two years ago, there was a severe heat wave across the state of Orissa, which killed almost a hundred people.
Now, meteors from space fall on, of all places, Orissa.
You do the math.
The Sun Will Explode In Less Than Six Years!
The Sun Will Explode In Less Than Six Years! Wednesday September 18, 2002
By GEORGE SANFORD
The Sun is overheating and will soon blow up . . . taking Earth and the rest of the solar system with it, scientists warn.
The alert was issued after an international satellite photographed a massive explosion on the surface of the Sun that sent a plume of fire 30 times longer than the diameter of Earth blasting into space.
"It's a sign that the Sun is ready to blow . . . I don't know if I can put it any more plainly than that," says Dutch astrophysicist Dr. Piers Van der Meer, a top expert affiliated with the European Space Agency.
"It will be like a nuclear bomb trillions of times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima going off at the center of our solar system.
"When that happens Earth will be instantly incinerated along with all life on it. It's like when a marshmallow falls into a fire, blackens and melts."
Scientists say the problem is the Sun is literally getting too hot.
The core temperature of the Sun is normally 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. But in recent years it's climbed to an alarming 49 million degrees, says Dr. Van der Meer, leader of a team of Amsterdam-based space scientists who've been tracking the changes in the Sun.
"It's quite similar to when a star goes supernova at the end of its life," Dr. Van der Meer explains. "Over the past 11 years, we've seen our Sun go through changes frighteningly like those that took place in Kepler's Star right before it was observed going supernova in 1604."
Temperatures on the surface of the Sun have been steadily climbing over the past decade, the scientists say.
"This, we believe, not man-made pollution, is responsible for global warming and the alarming effects that we've seen take place on Earth such as the melt-down of the Antarctic ice shelves," asserted Dr. Van der Meer.
The July 1 images were taken by the space-based Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a satellite designed to study the internal structure of the Sun and operated jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency.
"The explosion . . . known technically as an eruptive prominence . . . was colossal," said Dr. Van der Meer. "This is the final warning sign we've all been dreading."
The Dutch scientists calculate that if temperatures keep climbing at the current rate the Sun will be unable to sustain itself.
"It will blow apart like an out-of-control nuclear reactor within six years," predicts Dr. Van der Meer.
NASA refuses to confirm the Euro-pean scientists' assertions and a White House source said, "We don't need anyone spreading more panic now."
etc..
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
The ceo's of the companies doing the outsourcing, you know, the folks actually pulling the strings and running the country. They said better, thats why they are moving everything....
"all the guys looked pretty pissed off, but it was in the 20s or 30s, maybe people didn't smile back then."
Beer was illegal back then. What were you expecting?
Could this be similar to the famous 1908 Siberian explosion? Has the earth's core stopped spinning? Darn you, Art Bell.
A few comments, tek:
Ya right, if we still find texas sized objects that will end up flying within an astronomically small distance from earth in the next Decade, or Century for that matter, than there is no doubt there are things the size of a Volkswagon that are going to come very close to or hit earth and we have no idea yet.
For the most part, that was well put, though I'm not sure what you consider to be "astronomically small distances."
We can track all the space garbage and junk debris orbiting earth, but when a small or even large object moving at 64,000 mph (random number) is going to hit us, than it might never even show up on that "tracking" that NASA does of the earth orbit space debris.
This sort of scenario is beyond the scope of watching the stuff orbiting our planet for the sake of spacecraft and satellites. Though, I get the impression you would envision a fast moving object as being exceptionally difficult to pick out. This isn't so... everything's moving fast in relation to us. The best example I can think of is if you can think back to any recent comets, such as Hale-Bopp and Hykatutake (spelling?), to a casual observer, they appeared as very bright stationary objects in the sky... especially striking when you consider a comet's motion, when close enough to be viewed without any help from binoculars or a telescope, will appear exhaggerated, as opposed to when they are further out. Though, to be perfectly fair, a comet close enough to the Sun to be readily visible is a very different creature than an asteriod. Regardless, this isn't really a job NASA does; other posters have pointed out there are many amateur and/or professional astronomers who seek out new comets and asteriods as a hobby, and are, likely the best warning we have.
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
They said better, thats why they are moving everything....
I call shenanigans. CEO's go for cheaper, never for better. And once they see the quality drop (which it will) and they get sick of working at night to be on India's time, our jobs will be back, just watch.
Imagine if this thing had hit a towerblock in London, or an apartment complex in New York, possibly killing or injuring hundreds?
Yes. What if. Meteors have the whole solar system to miss earth in, and if they do actually hit, they have the entire surface of the earth to miss in. Do you know what percentage of the earth's surface is occupied by cities, let alone the percentage of volume in the solar system? The chances of a significant meteor hitting anything like that are vanishingly small, as demonstrated by the fact that we havn't had anything get hit for the past few thousand years. The risk associated with getting hit by a meteor is so small that it's not even worth trying to prevent.
Will the next story be the Asteroid on a collision course, do we need to send the shuttle, drill, blow up the asteroid.
btw. Armegeddon is playing on the F/X Channel now!
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Keep believing it, perhaps one day your fantasies might come true. But sorry to say, your "American jobs" won't be coming back to the land of the "free" anytime soon. Capitalist swine!
And tomorrow they will arrange "three" hits to counter india's "two" hits.
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
Good way to convince IT to stay in America if you ask me.
You are a fucking wanking troll, you know...
I guess even God is pissed about outsourcing all those jobs to India...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
thought i'd correct as I am an oriya.
When a post becomes too insightful, it often becomes funny.
A meteor becomes a meteorite once it hits the ground, so for one to strike an Indian village someone would have to break into the Smithosonian, steal one, and drop it from a plane.
I, for one, welcome our new Indian overlords.
Congratulations on your frequent use of the word, "Fuck" in both your posts and in your sig.
Not only does it call attention to your mastery of effective use of language, it immediately offends many people who read your posts, thus driving home your point all the more forecefully.
Bravo!
I want to see a virus that can withstand the temperature of falling through the atmosphere!
No, maybe I'd better rephrase that. Damn, I'd *hate* to see a virus that could withstand the temperature of falling through the atmosphere. Man, that'd be a *vicious* one!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Beautiful old neighborhood in Detroit, hundreds of glorious, grand houses. It's a shame to hear it's been destroyed. What? "Indian village," with a lower case "V?" Oops, nevermind.
I do thank them. It is quite amazing no pandering politician has yet had US taxpayers waste billions of dollars to track a bunch of shit in the sky. I mean, we've made it this far without being wiped out by a chunk of mud and metal, so I say lets worry about all of the things with a greater than 1 in a billion chance of wiping us out, before we go spending all our money to track intergallactic dirtclods.
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
lol.. i was thinking the same thing :P
Really folks, we aren't that stupid. If it's any comfort for you guys, the Indian Army has been heavily investing in radar of late, mostly from US and Israeli companies.
More than mere navel gazing.
Seven decades later, scientists recognised the dog had been struck by a meteorite from Mars.
I don't get it. They spend seven years investigating the cause of death for a dog? Or they were wandering past his grave and said "Ohh, look, a meteor sticking out of that dead dog's head"??
I remember reading about a monk who in the 1600s was hit in the leg by a meteorite. He died from his injury because it had damaged his femoral artery. Can't be bothered finding more info, but I'm sure *someone* has the time and inclination.
a tiny riverboat ferry that hit an Indian village at least 2000 would of drowned.....just passing through with a homemade brew and the keg, it is a sloshing
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
This is great news! Maybe a couple less dotheads means unemployment will drop? Couple less of those dotheaded job stealing camel jockies over here to take our jobs from us. Wahoo!
The tinfoil hat group isn't going to like this. They will need something a little stronger to protect themselves from these. ;-)
The truth shall set you free!
nuf sed
The pictures are pretty funny, all the guys looked pretty pissed off, but it was in the 20s or 30s, maybe people didn't smile back then.
Who started that trend of smiling for picts anyhow? Picture taking is not a pleasent experience, and I can't fake it. I prefer the old days where it was fashionable to look stoic. My mom always says, "Smile, or you will ruin the whole picture for everybody else who works so hard to smile". Jesus Polaroid Christ!
Next time I will just say, "Look!, a meteor!" and distract them all.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe it was the NASA Disco Ball, launched into orbit in 1999 by Space Shuttle Discovery.n aut/dnaut4.h tml
http://www.uncarved.demon.co.uk/disco
Amazingly, this wonder was brought to us by the same person who cancelled the request for in-flight photographs of the Columbia space shuttle!
"it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven".
Go back to the Aramaic and bring your jargon filter. It really says "it is easier for a *rope* to pass through the eye of a needle than..." but the KJV translator didn't understand that in the author's dialect of Aramaic, the etymology of the chosen word for rope was what it was made from (i.e. camel hair). Like you might use the word twine (a rope made from two strings) or hawser (a heavy line for hoisting) and dearly confuse some poor translator hundreds of years hence...
As an aside, anyone who thinks the Bible is inerrant is just being silly. It is an amazing collection of works, and the myths contained within really are as wise and useful as most Christians believe, but that doesn't make them factual or even true. As a further aside, it's too bad that that's considered a troll instead of an invitation to serious conversation, but what are you going to do?
Regards,
Ross
Meteorites are NOT hot when they hit. The heat comes from the impact energy, and is dispersed much to quickly to heat up any fragments of the impact body. Also during atmospere entry, the friction heat is absorbed by the outermost layer which 'boils' off. The lump of matter in the middle does not get hot. Google for 'ablation' if you want more info.
Parent post is an accurate description. Grandparent must be describing physics on some other planet.
In order for a meteor to fall, at terminal velocity, for 100 minutes, it would have to reach terminal velocity 360km above earth. The atmosphere at that altitude is only around 0.00000000001 kg/m^3, not 1.2 kg/m^3.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
So in fact, it is quite possible that a dinosaur-killer could hit New York tomorrow and wipe us all out, and we would have NO warning.
You definition of "quite possible" is a little different than mine. One of these things hits the earth aproximately once ever 70 million years (if that). So the chance of one hitting us tommorow is about 1 in 25,550,000,000. If that is "quite possible" then it's also quite possible that monkeys will fly out of my butt.
$50,000 US might make you well off by the standards of the average Indian, but it would hardly make you a "millionaire". At best, you'd be able to live a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.
Once you'd used some of that to buy a plot of land, a house, a car and some modern comforts (TV, PC, etc) you'd be surprised at how little would be left over. Please, stop perpetuating the myth that every thing is 20+ times cheaper in India or anywhere else.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Er, I was trying to say the tracking NASA does of the space debris close to earth in orbit. I've seen the tracking systems and the range they have been setup for because I've very interested in Aerospace Engineering and my father worked for NASA years past. In that situation if an object of some size was to move into that tracking system at an extreme speed and then into our atmosphere, I believe it would have only shown up for a very short period of time if at all, but nothing long enough for anyone to do anything about it. Sorry for the Confusion. -Tek
The Nakhla meteorite you are referring to killed just one dog. Several people have been injured by meteorites. (I remember at least one local newspaper story of a guy who got a fist-sized meteorite through his windshield at 80 km/h, and was injured when he drove off the road.)
A meteor does not necessarily reach ground, it may burn entirely in the atmosphere. In contrast, a meteorite hits the ground.
In 1908 the Tunguska meteor injured several people, one of them died a few days later. Dozens of reindeer got killed, and they were 30 km away. I assume some wild animals closer to the site were also killed, but the site was searched only in 1920s so we have no record on that. The blast was equivalent to 15 Megatonnes, so only one dead human is really good luck.
The problem is that while the probability of impact is quite low (but for some asteroids it's as much as 1 in a million), the potential loss of life and wealth is huge. So the expected value of loss of life to meteorites is tens/hundreds of thousands of people and the expected loss of wealth is tens/hundreds of billions of dollars. Not to mention that extinction of humanity would be an immeasurable loss.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I think ya meant CHEAPER not better, have ya ever read Dilbert?
Um, I've always wondered exactly what this means. Pictures sent back from probes that didn't confuse inches with centimeters suggest that Mars is strewn with rocks. So what happens? A rock is just sitting there one day, bored with the dual moonset, and decides to leave? With no fuel, or other way of defeating gravity? One minute it's just sitting there, the next it's hurtling through space?
The amount of money required to do this would be vast, vast enough that were it spent on humanitarian aims instead it would have a 100% chance of preventing millions of deaths *every year* here on earth.
Sounds like a better gamble to me.
geez, no blank comments allowed?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Yeah, being in a Great Depression will do that to ya.
(More seriously, it's only been post-WWII that people have regularly smiled for photos. It's a cultural thing.)
Actually, Nasa did claim to be tracking just about everyting in orbit - there was a special on it on the discovery channel and the methods they used. The Space Control Center in Cheyenne Mountain is responsible for it. Read all about it
Yes but given the fact that this comes from space the geek factor has increased to the point that slashdoters actually would care. (And most likely make a number of insensitive clod comments about it)
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Naw, spending money on this wouldn't be vast, it would only be half-vast! :)
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
I always though it had something to do with the exposure time, didn't it used to be in the 15-30 second range or something. Or was that way way back when photography was just starting.
Has anyone else seen those exhibits?, my dates are probably way off.
Not because of the meteor itself, but because India and Pakistan apparently have no ballistic missle early warning system to speak of. A large enough meteor hit could easily be mistaken for a first strike.
Luckily, this one was fairly small.
If you'd paid attention in your history classes, you would remember that the smile was invented around 1918, but was patented. No one was able to smile without paying royalties to the inventor. Fortunately, the patent has since lapsed into the public domain and people are free to smile.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
20 American IT jobs open up
India is in the Northern Hemisphere, too.
~m
"McCarthy destroyed communism/socialism/marxism in USA"
That was the one good thing he did. The USA socialist movement was controlled by the USSR, and as such it was composed entirely of traitors who favored the Soviets doing to the USA what the Soviets had done to the Ukraine.
How is there anything bad about defeating this genocidal movement which is evil no matter which way you look at it? Defeating communism is at least as good as defeating Nazism.
"If anything, the so-called Christian-right is one of the most pro-war crowd in all of Western world. "
No, it is not. You have no examples of this.