Slashdot Mirror
NASA Says Asteroid Will Buzz Earth Closer Than Many Satellites
coondoggie writes "NASA says an asteroid about half the size of a football field will blow past Earth on Feb 15 closer than many man-made satellites. NASA added that while the asteroid, designated 2012 DA14, has no chance of striking Earth. Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, astronomers have never seen an object so big come so close to our planet."
Chuck norris was too busy saving us from north korea, to also blow up the asteroid heading for earth.
"... has no chance of striking Earth"
Famous last words.
..to view such a spectacle would be?
A soccer field doesn't have any size defined. It's just "between 90 and 120m" long and "between 45 and 90m" wide. So btw the smallest and biggest field, there is almost a factor of 2.7 in area. That's a bit of a margin!
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Why would a change in mass change the trajectory? Granted, it was a while since I took physics, but from what I remember:
1. The force of gravity follows F = GMm / (r^2) where M and m are the masses of the two objects in consideration. Here I will use m as the mass of the asteroid and M as the mass of any other object that is not the asteroid.
2. F = ma.
3. From this follows that a = (GMm / (r^2)) / m = GM / (r^2). As we can see, m (the mass of the asteroid)
This means means that the accelleration of an object due to gravity is only affected directly by the other object's mass, not by the object's own mass. However, a more massive object *could* attract other objects with a higher accelleration than expected, thus reducing r, thus over time increasing the accelleration, changing the tracjectory of not only the asteroid but also the other object.
Consider for a moment, however, how insignificant such an effect would be:
First imagine an asteroid the size of a football field. Then imagine the moon. Then imagine the earth. Then imagine the sun. Now imagine the mass of an asteroid even moving the moon more than an imperceptible amount due to gravity, let alone the sun.
Why source a story sourced from NASA to some wanker's blog in Network World"?Presuambly this asshole just submitted it himself to get more pageviews.
The actual NASA story is Record Setting Asteroid Flyby And it actually tells you that "On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet's surface." (Sadly even NASA use the inane "football field" measure, but goes on to say "It measures some 50 meters wide".)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001569/bio
"He is a black belt in Tang Soo Do and Tae Kwan Do. In 1969, he earned the Triple Crown for the highest number of tournament wins, and was named Fighter of the Year by "Black Belt" magazine. By the time he was 34, Norris had established 32 karate schools and had been a champion for six years. In 1996, he became the first Westerner to be awarded an eighth-degree black belt in Tae Kwan Do"
I am not a big fan of this guy, and i agree these Chuck Norris jokes are very annoying, however, facts are facts and clearly you are wrong about the martial arts.
Well, geostationary orbit is about 250,000 km in circumference, and it contains about 400 satellites at present. Assuming they're each 50m wide (which is probably an exaggeration) then the satellites, in total, cover 20km of that circumference. So if we were to assume that all the satellites are in the same plane, and that the asteroid was definitely going to come in through that plane, then the chances of the asteroid meeting one of those satellites is 0.008%.
A back of the envelope calculation suggests you have the same odds of spinning around in a circle with your eyes shut and successfully pointing at a person standing 3km away.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm fluent in Polish (my native language) and it also has an incredibly flexible syntax, possibly more so than English. In fact, word ordering is one of the ways to control emphasis in Polish.
We know. Thats how we got Polish notation.
The trouble is that what happened to Shoemaker Levy 9 doesn't scale down: it was ripped apart by the tidal forces of a gas giant, and those forces don't exist for a similar size of body interacting with Earth.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Martial Arts is a broad term, and most people (like you) only pay attention to the "Martial" part. The Style that Chuck specializes in and teaches in his schools is focused on rigid adherence to the traditional Forms, and application of mental Discipline. They are as well-suited to an open fighting situation as disciplines classified as Fighting Styles, which is why you don't see people using pure forms in competitions like the UFC... winners often have a background from a variety of styles which is why they are called "mixed martial arts" competitions.
Not to say that people like Chuck and Bruce Lee aren't pretty mean fighters, anybody with that much training is not going to be an easy mark. But I'd put almost anybody who fights in the large UFC competitions against a pure style fighter any day, especially if they aren't in a ring with time limits and rules.
Having said all that, it's important to note that Chuck, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and other popular film fighters have to slow down most of their moves so the audience can follow the action, and what they actually do on screen are sequences and styles you wouldn't ever actually use in real life combat. Many of the "moves" they display for the camera are not actually combat moves, but rather are meditative Forms designed to build endurance, focus, and strength.
I don't think I'd classify Bruce Lee in with anyone who focus(ed) on "ridged adherence to the traditional forms". If anything he's the reason we have MMA and UFC. He did everything he could to strip away what he deemed unnecessary. I don't know what Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan are doing these days, but they both learned a lot from Bruce Lee when he was alive.
Agreed regarding the moves that you typically see in movies. They are rarely something that you would see being used off screen. I know that they all have to slow down for movies. I've heard that Bruce Lee had to slow down due to the limitations of the film at the time. I'm sure it also had to do with his movies being shot on low budget equipment too. But if you ever saw any of his demonstrations you'd understand the guy was scary quick.
Absolutely dead-on-balls correct. Bruce Lee founded Jeet Kune Do, where the whole idea is to be fluid and able to improvise. Bruce was THE MAN. He got into street gangs in China before moving to the states, so he has some street cred; he knew what it took to fight for real.
As someone who studied Kempo many many moons ago, I wholly agree with Bruce's outlook. What I was taught was extremely rigid, canned moves that might work if you were extremely lucky enough for an attacker to come at you in precisely the manner they trained you for, but if they deviated at all, if all you had to rely on were the moves you were taught (and you couldn't improvise on your own), you'd be toast. Though I'm not sure if this reflects more on Kempo itself, or the school I attended.
Though this leads me to wonder why we have this prevalent Chuck Norris meme, but not one for Bruce Lee?
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That's just because Bruce did not have the +10 Manly Beard of Manliness.