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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."
"... 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 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?
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.