Unnaturally Surreal | The Darkest Of Days February 2015 (1)

HawkkeyDavisChannel | Mar 4, 2015

Fireball & sonic boom witnessed from Florida to South Carolina

Heat map of fireball sightings
(Image from AMSmeteors.org)

RT | Feb 23, 2015

Residents of the Sunshine State say they spotted a massive fireball soar through the Florida sky over the weekend, and similar reports have since surfaced from as far away as South Carolina.

According to the American Meteorological Society (AMS), 189 people have filed reports since late Saturday evening, when they saw a fireball cut through the night sky. At least 15 eyewitnesses described seeing the phenomenon accompanied by what the AMS called a "window rattling delayed boom."

It “sounded like an explosion,” a witness, who gave her name as Kasey W. from Lake City, FL, told the AMS. Another person who said she encountered the fireball, Lindsey E., also of Lake City, said her “windows and walls shook along with a loud pop and boom.”

The AMS has logged reports from supposed witnesses in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, and experts told local media that the apparent sightings seem to suggest a meteor is to blame.

“The fact that people heard sonic booms [means] it did survive down to the lower atmosphere," Robert Lunsford, a volunteer with the AMS, told Jacksonville’s WJXT. "So there's a good chance that some small fragments may have reached the ground probably about 50 miles west of Jacksonville.”

“The best way I can describe it is it looked like a large firework,” witness Tracie Sradley told Jacksonville’s Action News. “But then there was a big ball of fire behind it and as quick as we seen it, it was gone.”

The fireball, Sradley said, was “just like the brightest, the prettiest – it was actually gorgeous, it was beautiful.”

According to the AMS, reports from across the Deep South suggest the meteor was heading northeast and indeed met its demise just west of Jacksonville — around 250 miles south of Augusta, GA, where some witness reports were filed.

Sunday’s incident came just a few days after similar reports surfaced up the East Coast, where residents of the Mid-Atlantic states on Tuesday described seeing a fireball that the AMS believes was a 500-pound meteor that was traveling at around 45,000 miles per hour before breaking up in western Pennsylvania.

Lunsford told WJXT that this time of year presents the perfect conditions for meteor viewing.

"At this time of the year in the evening sky, we have a path in the sky called the ecliptic is where the moon and the sun and the planets all follow," he said. "During those three months it's highest in the sky during the evening hours.”

RAW: 500 pound meteor bursts into flames over Pittsburgh

RT America | Feb 18, 2015

A meteor weighing nearly 500 pounds entered the atmosphere over Pittsburgh, PA early Tuesday morning, bursting into a ball of flame as it descended through the Earth’s atmosphere.

Planet Phenomena: Shockwaves, High Winds, Cosmic Traffic, Electromagnetic Universe [Video]

Lightning inside a storm
© Courtesy SOTT Summary

SOTT | Feb 8, 2015

The following video compiles footage of 'signs of the times' from around the world during January 2015 - 'earth changes', extreme weather, meteor fireballs, and planetary upheaval.

Phenomenal amounts of snow were dumped in the Northeastern and Southern US, Western and Southeastern Europe, the Middle East, Western China, and Far Eastern Russia. Saudi Arabia and the Southwestern US desert were hit with snow for the third year running. The US media has apparently dropped the term 'Polar Vortex' because Arctic conditions extending all the way to the Gulf of Mexico is now 'normal'. The one place where you might expect a lot of snow this time of year - Moscow - instead enjoyed its warmest January in 100 years.

© Courtesy SOTT Summary

The Great Lakes in North America aren't as frozen over as they were this time last year, but those 'ice boulders' returned to Michigan in January, and the Niagara Falls have again partially frozen. Up to half a million people were affected by the worst flooding Southeastern Africa has seen for decades. The Balkans were flooded for the 5th time in 20 months, and barely two months on from receiving 70cm of rain in one day, Sicily was hit with a similar quantity of hail. Among the spectacular meteor fireball sightings in January were a comet fragment breaking apart over the Russian Far East, and a fireball that turned night into day in Bucharest, Romania.

'Mystery booms' continue to freak people (and animals) out across the US. We suspect that some of them are shockwaves from overhead meteor explosions, but others occur in clusters and are picked up by seismometers (despite there being no known fault-lines), so we are probably looking at general and unusual seismic activity resulting from the slow-down in the planet's rotation. This would also be responsible for all these volcanic eruptions, of which there were more spectacular ones in January. 'Earth opening up' also saw sinkholes swallow moving cars in Florida and Maryland.


As you watch this video summary of events in January, keep in mind that we had to leave out so many other unusual events because they're now part of 'the new normal'!

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[...]

Rosetta Mission Update | First Science Papers

Thunderbolts Project | Feb 7, 2015

Scientists with the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission are writing a new chapter in the history of comet science. However, institutional science’s understanding of comets is less certain today than at any time before. Recently, the Rosetta team published their first scientific papers following their successful landing on the comet 67P. Yet the scientific summaries raised far more question than answers.

Science Magazine special, To Catch a Comet: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/specia...

Nature Magazine article, Science pours in from Rosetta comet mission: http://www.nature.com/news/science-po...

The electric comet idea forces us to consult the astronomical testimony of our earlier forebears, where independent accounts, told with different words and different symbols in different parts of the world, convey a story of planetary catastrophe.

Watch Update #1: The Rocky Comet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-a_j...
Watch Update #2: Comets May Not Be What We Thought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UliV...
Watch Update #3: Oops! No Water on Comet 67P? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqxF5...
Watch Update #4: Rubble on 67P Defies Current Comet Theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMkj...
Watch Update #5: Jets of Comet 67P -- Failed "Explanations" Continue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceZqI...
Watch Update #6: Comet 67P -- Electrical Sculpting of Surface Dust https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0smmB...
Watch Update #7: 67P—The Violent Birth of a Comet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdfDc...

Check out The Electric Comet documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt...

Executive Producer: Gerald Simonson
Script and Narration: David Talbott
Chief Science Advisor: Wal Thornhill
Animation and Editing: Brian Talbott
Executive Assistant: Susan Schirott
Music: Softsound (Nancy Holt)

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As big as five football fields: Massive asteroid to be visible from Earth in just a day

Reuters / NASA

RT | Jan 24, 2015

An asteroid the size five football fields is approaching Earth and is expected to pass by on Monday. It will be visible through strong binoculars – definitely worth getting; the next time such an asteroid could be this close again will be in 2027.

At the closest point to the Earth, asteroid 2004 BL86 will be at a distance of 1.2 million kilometers which – approximately three times the distance from the Earth to the moon. Estimated to be 0.5 km in diameter, it is classified by scientists as potentially dangerous.

A space object is considered “potentially dangerous” if it crosses the Earth's orbit at a distance of less than 0.05 AU (approximately 19.5 distances from the Earth to the Moon), and if its diameter exceeds 100-150 meters. Objects of this size are large enough to cause unprecedented destruction, or generate a tsunami in case they fall into the ocean.

This graphic depicts the passage of asteroid 2004 BL86. (Image credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech)

However, according to astronomers, there is no threat of the object colliding with our planet this time.

“While it poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more,” Don Yeomans from NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

It is very rare that such a huge space body comes this close to Earth. The next time an asteroid might be passing by will be in 2027, when 1999 AN10 flies past Earth. As for 2004 BL86 itself, it can be monitored from Earth for another 200 years.

Astronomers strongly recommend trying to catch this unique opportunity to spot an asteroid in the sky. It will be possible on January 26 between 11:07 pm and 11:52 pm ET (04:07 and 04:52 GMT).

It will be best seen in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Amateur astronomers will be able to observe it with small telescopes and even strong binoculars.

“I may grab my favorite binoculars and give it a shot myself,” Yeomans said in the statement.  “Asteroids are something special. Not only did asteroids provide Earth with the building blocks of life and much of its water, but in the future, they will become valuable resources for mineral ores and other vital natural resources.”

Numerous observatories all over the world will use this opportunity to learn something new about 2004 BL86. NASA's Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico will try to procure scientific data and radar-generated images of the asteroid while it is in its closest position to the Earth.

“When we get our radar data back the day after the flyby, we will have the first detailed images,” radar astronomer Lance Benne said. “At present, we know almost nothing about the asteroid, so there are bound to be surprises.”

2004 BL86 was discovered on January 30, 2004, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), responsible for the majority of asteroid discoveries from 1998 until 2005, when it was overtaken by the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS). The asteroid orbits the Sun every 1.84 years.

Bigger problems than global warming – NASA discovers 8 new dangerous near Earth asteroids

The Chelyabinsk meteor, possibly
caused by a near Earth Asteroid

Watts Up With That | Jan 19, 2015 | Eric Worrall

In 2013, NASA decided to take time out from creating spectacularly useless climate models, and reactivated their Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer programme. The result is moderately terrifying – 8 previously unknown near Earth asteroids with catastrophic impact potential have been discovered, along with a host of smaller bodies which have the potential to wipe out a city.

According to The Register;

In December 2013, NASA re-activated the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) and in the twelve months since the project discovered three new comets and 40 previously-unknown near-earth objects, eight of which have Earth-bonking potential.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/16/ninety_new_doom_asteroids_found_in_2014/

The JPL website contains more information about the discoveries of various space survey projects;

“WISE was launched into a low-Earth orbit in December 2009, and surveyed the full sky in four infrared wavelength bands (3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 µm) with a 40 cm (16 in) diameter infrared telescope until the frozen hydrogen cooling the telescope was depleted in September 2010. Throughout this time, NEOWISE searched the WISE data for moving objects. Starting in October 2010, the mission was renamed NEOWISE, and the survey continued for an additional four months using the two shortest wavelength detectors. The spacecraft was placed into hibernation in February 2011, after completing its search of the inner solar system.

Recently, NEOWISE has been brought out of hibernation to learn more about the population of near-Earth objects and comets that could pose an impact hazard to the Earth. A three-year survey in the 3.4 and 4.6 µm infrared bands began in December 2013 in which NEOWISE will rapidly characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs) and obtain accurate measurements of their diameters and albedos (how much light an object reflects). NEOWISE is equally sensitive to both light-colored asteroids and the optically dark objects that are difficult for ground-based observers to discover and characterize. Just six days after the restart of the survey, NEOWISE discovered its first potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid, 2013 YP139.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/neowise.html

The JPL data table is a little tricky to read, but if I’ve understood it correctly, you take the “H” value (absolute magnitude – a measure of “brightness”) from the asteroid table http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Dangerous.html , and look up that value in the diameter conversion chart, to get a range of possible diameters http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Sizes.html . The diameter estimate is a range, because the size of the asteroid is not the only factor which affects the magnitude / brightness of the object.

YP139 has a “H” value of 21.6, which corresponds to a possible diameter of 130 – 300 metres.

To put this into perspective, the Chelyabinsk meteor which caused a 500 kiloton explosion over Russia in 2013 was estimated to be around 20 metres in diameter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor A 300 metre object has the potential to cause (300 ^ 3 / 20 ^ 3) * 500 kilotons = 1.6 Gigaton explosion. An explosion of this magnitude, especially an ocean strike, could create gigantic Tsunamis, and would severely disrupt the global climate for several years, possibly longer.

Its nice to know that NASA occasionally takes a break from climate bothering, long enough to do something space related, but I’m mildly horrified that a project this important appears to be so far down the list of priorities, that the project was mothballed for a year while the survey satellite stood waiting for a refuel. Granted that a major Asteroid strike is a low probability event, but the consequences are potentially catastrophic – a big ocean strike could kill millions, maybe even billions of people.

As the Chelyabinsk wakeup call demonstrated, the risk of a damaging meteor impact is not a possibility which should be neglected.

Rosetta Mission Update | 67P—The Violent Birth of a Comet

Thunderbolts Project | Jan 17, 2015

The electric comet idea forces us to consult the astronomical testimony of our earlier forebears, where independent accounts, told with different words and different symbols in different parts of the world, convey a story of planetary catastrophe.


Watch Update #1: The Rocky Comet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-a_j...
Watch Update #2: Comets May Not Be What We Thought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UliV...
Watch Update #3: Oops! No Water on Comet 67P? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqxF5...
Watch Update #4: Rubble on 67P Defies Current Comet Theory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMkj...
Watch Update #5: Jets of Comet 67P -- Failed "Explanations" Continue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceZqI...
Watch Update #6: Comet 67P -- Electrical Sculpting of Surface Dust https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0smmB...

Ocean Snow in Florida Sets Record

News4Jax | Jan 9, 2015 | Blake Mathews

© New4Jax

 [...] According to meteorologist Jason Hess, only three snowfalls have actually accumulated officially in Jacksonville in 103 years (1956, 1986 and 1989) with the greatest 24 hour accumulation of 1.9 inches in February 1899 -- before records officially began.

Thursday's snowfall was a rare phenomenon known as 'ocean effect snow.' It's the same idea as lake-effect snow except it occurs over the ocean.  The idea here is that the water is warmer than the land this time of year allowing moisture to rise and condense to form clouds and rain or snow.

When our winds shifted to the northeast, the moisture began moving towards land. Even though the surface temperatures were above freezing near the surface, the air just above the boundary layer (basically the first few hundred feet above the surface) was below freezing allowing the snowflakes to make it to the ground before melting. Voila! Snow.

It nearly didn't happen though. A powerful arctic front pushed through Florida late Wednesday powered by a mega-high pressure system over the mid west. That high drove in a lot of dry air, evidence by our dew points (measure of moisture in the air) into the teens meaning any flakes would have evaporated before reaching the ground. Through the process of evaporative cooling (wet-bulbing), our atmosphere cooled and moistened just enough to allow for the flakes to hit the ground.

Snow was last observed officially, a trace, in Jacksonville the day after Christmas in 2010 with measurable snowfall in southeast Georgia.

Read more..

SOTT Summary - December 2014: Extreme Weather, Earth Changes, Fireballs, High Strangeness

SOTT Media | Jan 7, 2015

© Courtesy SOTT Summary

The twelth installment in our monthly series, the following video compiles footage of 'signs of the times' from around the world during December 2014 - 'earth changes', extreme weather, meteor fireballs, high strangeness and planetary upheaval.

Mother Nature was apparently determined to see out 2014 with a bang, ramping up the extreme weather and Earth Changes in December. Snowstorms buried cities in Russia's Far east and Northeastern China, where a waterfall on the Yellow River partially froze. Japan was hit with record-breaking snowfall for the second time in a year, while a deep freeze in Northern India claimed at least 150 lives.

A week of non-stop electrical storms brought hail, flooding and widespread damage to Sydney, Australia, while a huge sinkhole swallowed three cars in Melbourne. Fish and whales continue to turn up dead in large numbers on coastlines and in freshwater lakes and rivers, thanks in part to increased volcanic activity, demonstrated above ground in December via eruptions in Indonesia, Mexico, Iceland, Cape Verde, Hawaii and Japan.

Drought-stricken Sao Paulo was inundated with rain, turning streets into rivers. Waterspouts appeared in Australia and the Mediterranean, a tornado hit downtown LA for the first time in decades, while another 'unseasonal' tornado outbreak in the U.S. South killed 5 and left dozens homeless. The "worst flooding in decades" hit Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Sri Lanka, where some quarter million people had to evacuate their homes.

A trail of storms pummelled the US West Coast, with landslides, mudslides, blizzards, and flash-flooding washing away homes and roads. Across the Atlantic, a so-called 'weather bomb' hit the UK and Ireland, bringing monster waves and hurricane-force winds. This was followed by a big freeze that brought blizzards to Western Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, where Malta received its first snow in over a half-century.

Spectacular meteor fireballs were filmed over Puerto Rico, Brazil, the US, Canada, Spain, and Japan. So-called 'mystery' booms shook homes in communities from the US to the UK. An incredible UFO sighting in Santiago, Chile, and the appearance of a bright glowing 'plasma light' over Lima, Peru rang in the New Year.



Buckle up for 2015; it's gonna be 'interesting'!

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SOTT Earth Changes Video Summary - November 2014

© SOTT Earth Changes Screenshot

SOTT | Dec 7, 2014 | Sott Editors

It's one thing to have record early cold temperatures and record early snowfalls in both Eurasia and North America. To have the greatest ever snow coverage for the Northern Hemisphere by mid-November is something else. November 2014 was alternately mild and super-freezing as the Polar Jet Stream whip-lashed the North American continent, bringing monster snowstorms that dumped entire annual snowfall averages in many parts of the U.S., not least the city of Buffalo, New York, which was buried under 7 feet (2.25 meters) of snow.
Numerous bright meteor fireballs were caught on camera, including several big ones - probably comet/asteroid fragments - that were seen from huge swathes of the US, Russia, China, Japan and Europe. Buenos Aires was flooded for the second time this year, while record-breaking (in many cases, breaking records set last month) rainfall levels were seen across much of the western Mediterranean, killing many people in Morocco, southeastern France and northwestern Italy.

© SOTT Earth Changes Screenshot

Sinkholes from China to Florida opened up to swallow people and cars. Brisbane, Australia was literally smashed by baseball-sized hail in a surprise 'super-storm'. The Great Lakes began to refreeze by mid-November, not 4 months after finally thawing from last winter. Japan's largest active volcano erupted, as did Colima Volcano in Mexico, and Pavlof in Alaska, each sending ash plumes several kilometers high, while lava flows from Hawaii's Kilauea and Cape Verde's Fire Island destroyed homes.

Then there were UFOs over Paris and Iran, pods of deepwater whales seeking shallow waters, and tornado outreaks in the Mediterranean... has the world gone mad? These were the 'Signs of the Times' in November 2014:



Read more..

Bigger than Apophis: Dangerous 300+ meter asteroid to cross Earth orbit every 3 years

AFP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech

RT | Dec 7, 2014

Scientists have calculated that 2014 UR116 asteroid will fly in dangerous proximity to Earth every three years. If it collides with the planet the energy of the explosion could be a thousand times greater than the impact of the Chelyabinsk meteorite.

Vladimir Lipunov, a leading scientist on the team which discovered the asteroid this October, says the scientists now know its orbit and its period which is 3 years, but they cannot say precisely when the asteroid will approach the Earth.

“We should track it constantly. Because if we have a single mistake, there will be a catastrophe. The consequences can be very serious,” he said in the documentary “Asteroids attack” posted on Roscosmos website.

The new asteroid, called 2014 UR116 is about 370 meters in diameter. Its size exceeds the famous Apophis which the Earth can meet in the next decade. The exact trajectory of 2014 UR116 is yet to be determined, but theoretically it may collide with the Earth, Mars or Venus. Its trajectory can fluctuate because of the gravitational pull of these planets.

READ MORE: 1,000 times stronger than Chelyabinsk meteorite: New asteroid may threaten Earth

Some specialists believe we can be sure for a certain period of time that no collision will happen. Viktoria Damm from the Siberian Geodesic Academy Planetarium told TASS news agency that when the asteroid flies near Mars, its trajectory may change. That’s why the time of approach is unknown but she believes it will not happen in the coming two years.

Orbit of asteroid 2014 UR116 as of November 3 (Image credit: JPL/NASA)

In case of a collision with the Earth the energy of the explosion could be a thousand times greater than the Chelyabinsk meteorite. When a meteorite burst above the city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, the impact was estimated to be equivalent to 440-500 kilotons of TNT. But the Chelyabinsk meteorite was relatively small, about 17 meters in diameter and it disintegrated with a blast at an altitude of over 20 kilometers.

It is also important to define the composition of an asteroid. If it consists of stone it generally breaks into small parts, but metal asteroid can reach the surface of Earth, according to Stanislav Korotky, Ka Dar observatory scientific director. The famous Arizona crater is the track of a metal asteroid.

READ MORE: Meteorite hits Russian Urals: Fireball explosion wreaks havoc, up to 1,200 injured (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

The Chelyabinsk meteorite prompted the scientists to fully engage in projects of space security. Russian space agency Roscosmos plans to work out a special system to stand against dangerous asteroids by 2025. The agency wants to use new technologies to change the orbits of asteroids, including different kinds of robots, for instance, robots-cleaners to take away the space rubbish from Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, NASA is working on projects Orbita@home and Spacewatch and plans to deploy The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in 2015.

The asteroid 2014 UR116 was discovered with the help of Russia's network of robotic telescopes which perform the sky survey without human direction and can create its own data bases.

Meteorite From Mars Contains Alien Biomass: Scientists

© Flickr/ Jon Taylor

Sputnik News | Dec 3, 2014

A meteorite from Mars, found in the Moroccan desert three years ago, contains organic matter of extraterrestrial origin, scientists say.

MOSCOW, December 3 (Sputnik) — Chinese scientists discovered that a meteorite of Martian origin that hit Earth in Morocco in summer 2011, contains signs of water and organic carbon combinations, which may be evidence of extraterrestrial life dating 700,000 years back in time. 

Meteorite ‘Tissint’ landed in the midst of Moroccan desert of Guelmim-Es Semara on 18 July, 2011, roughly 700,000 years after it was chopped off the Martian surface by an asteroid from outer space. The 8-kg gray-coloured glassy boulder surprised scientists, as in contained traces of water, but it was only recently that the researchers found previously unidentified matter in its carbon composition, biological  and organic in nature.

The researchers assumed the organic matter could still have appeared on the space guest after it landed on Earth. But the recent tests have ultimately proven it is extraterrestrial nature.

"We cannot and do not want to entirely exclude the possibility that organic carbon within Tissint may be of abiotic origin," Professor Yangting Lin of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing wrote, suggesting the organic matter may still be physical, not biological, in origin. However, this is very unlikely.

"It could be possible that the organic carbon originated from impacts of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. However, it is not easy to conceive by which processes chondritic carbon could have been selectively extracted from the impacting carbonaceous chondrites, selectively removed from the soil and later impregnated in the extremely fine rock veins," Lin concludes. The full study was published in the journal ‘Meteoritics & Planetary Science’.

The scientists point out the organic matter is extraterrestrial in origin and has four unusual features. Firstly, the meteorite did not spend a lot of time on Earth outside of the scientists’ control. Secondly, the organic matter was sealed inside the rock, under its glassy surface, created by the high temperatures only possible at atmospheric entry. Thirdly, some of these carbon compositions hardened into diamond, which is also only possible in natural conditions outside of Earth. Fourthly, the carbon-containing matter also bears a lot of deuterium, found in Martian soil.

NASA map downplays sharp rise in meteor fireball impacts over last 20 years

SOTT | Nov 17, 2014 | Gary Boyle & Niall Bradley

© NASA/JPL

NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Program published a diagram a few days ago, showing 556 mapped comet/asteroid fragment impacts on Earth over the last 20 years (see above). NASA says it's based on data gathered from 1994-2013 on small asteroids impacting Earth's atmosphere to create 'fireballs, adding that "the sizes of yellow dots (daytime impacts) and blue dots (nighttime impacts) are proportional to the optical radiated energy of impacts measured in billions of Joules (GJ) of energy, and show the location of impacts from objects about 1 meter (3 feet) to almost 20 meters (60 feet) in size."

Note the random distribution of impacts around the globe. But note also what the map and accompanying NASA report do not indicate: the year-on-year distribution of those impact events over that 20-year period. This omission enables them to give the following misleading subheading to their report:

It happens all the time: small asteroids impact Earth's atmosphere

By not providing a year-on-year breakdown of the impacts, and by including their rather banal headline, NASA leaves us to assume that these events were more or less evenly distributed over those 20 years - on average, 27 fireball events of note in 2013 (556 total events/20 years). But we have serious doubts about this.

We know from the American Meteor Society that there were nearly 3,500 observed events in 2013 alone - and just in the US.

Read more..

Rosetta Could Change Science Forever | Space News

Thunderbolts Project | Oct 15, 2014

Human beings around the world may be witnessing one of the most significant dramas in the modern history of the space sciences. The ESA’s Rosetta mission to the comet 67P has shattered the theoretical predictions of standard comet science. For many decades, we were told that comets are dirty snowballs, which formed billions of years ago, tracing back to the solar system’s origins. In contrast, the electric universe has stated for decades that comets, meteors and asteroids are materials excavated electrically from planetary surfaces. Wal Thornhill explains that the Rosetta mission has already provided a stunning confirmation of the electric comet theory.

The Electric Comet feature-length documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34wtt...

Previous Space News on Rosetta mission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYIpU...

Looking for a fast track to comprehensive education on the Electric Universe? Those most eager to learn are invited to the EU Workshop, November 14-16, 2014 at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown. This event will be led by Wal Thornhill and Dave Talbott, who are preparing full summaries of their life’s work, something that has never been presented publicly. Wal’s talks will be complemented by additional material from electrical theorist Dr. Donald Scott, and Dave’s presentations will be reinforced by Ev Cochrane, author of several essential books on the ancient sky. Seating will be limited. Check out: https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2014...

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Asteroid size of large bus to zip between Earth & moon on Sunday

RT | Sept 5, 2014

An asteroid will speed past our planet on Sunday, practically shaving terrestrial space as the rock whizzes past Earth just one tenth of its distance from the moon. The rare occasion will be most clearly witnessed in the skies above New Zealand.

The space traveler was discovered at the end of august by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, and independently detected the next night by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope, located on the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii, according to NASA.

At its closest, asteroid 2014 RC will be mere 34,000km from New Zealand, while geosynchronous communications and weather satellites remain in a 36,000km orbit. Although closer than those satellites, it is guaranteed to pass our planet safely on September 7 at 18:18GMT (2:18pm EDT).

“While 2014 RC will not impact Earth, its orbit will bring it back to our planet's neighborhood in the future,” NASA officials said.

“The asteroid's future motion will be closely monitored, but no future threatening Earth encounters have been identified,” NASA reassured.

Traditionally, astronomers calculate the proximity between space objects as distances between their centers of mass, which in the case of our planet is the center of Earth’s core.

On Sunday asteroid 2014 RC will reach its 40,000km minimum from the Earth’s core. With the average radius of the Earth estimated to be about 6,371km, this means the 18-meter space rock will be actually less than 34,000km from the planet’s surface.

Still, according to NASA, it will be impossible to see the space rock passing by with the naked eye because it will be too dim even in good weather conditions, though amateur astronomers will have a chance to image the asteroid 2014 RC, which will be moving really fast to be tracked because of its closeness to Earth.

There will be two webcasts of the 2014 RC asteroid passing near the planet. One is being prepared by the Slooh Community Observatory (begins on September 7, 02:00 GMT/September 6, 10pm EDT), which often organizes online live broadcast of various celestial events, another one to be broadcasted by the Virtual Telescope Project (starting on September 6, 22:00 GMT/6pm EDT).

So far NASA has discovered over 10,000 objects in our solar system that have orbits passing near Earth.

Never-before-seen meteor shower could light up entire North America over weekend

AFP Photo / Ethan Miller

RT | May 23, 2014

North America is in for a natural light show overhead, as a meteor shower expected over the weekend could turn into a full-on sky storm, affecting countries’ entire skylines. Its intensity could even outdo the Perseid meteor shower.

Stargazers are expecting the spectacle to hit late Friday and last into Sunday morning, just as Earth passes through a stream of debris consisting of up to 1,000 pieces of a comet it shed in the 1800s falling all around, every hour, at speeds of 12 miles per second (19.3kps).

The so-called May Camelopardalids will peak at about 2am to 4am on Saturday, eastern US time, according to Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environmental Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The name comes from the corner of the sky where we’ll have to focus our gaze to see the shower’s most prominent bits – the Giraffe constellation, right next to the North Star.

However, shockingly, it could still be the case that the meteor shower bypasses us altogether – or that we don’t see the rainstorm effect in its full glory.

"For all our computer models and equipment, we astronomers are just like the average sky watcher in North America," Cooke, who heads the center, said.

“If Comet 209P/LINEAR was a poor producer of debris, we’ll see nothing. But if the comet was more active 200 or 300 years ago, we’ll see a decent show. What happens this Saturday morning was determined a few hundred years ago,” Cooke added, as cited by the Washington Post.

The event was first predicted 10 years ago by Peter Jenkins, another astronomer, who holds similar reservations about the grandeur of the spectacle. This is because when a comet leaves a trail of dust (which we call a meteor shower), you never know how much dust will be shed. And the 209P/LINEAR comet, discovered in 2004, wasn’t really that big.

According to Jenkins, "We don't know what the comet was doing hundreds of years ago,” and its behavior back then would have indicated to astronomers today what to expect with much bigger certainty. The guesswork is because this is the first time our planet is going to have an opportunity to pass through a dust cloud left by this comet. We can only assume it will look absolutely breath-taking.”

And just as heavy celestial bodies influence a comet’s trajectory, so do they influence the trajectory of the ensuing gas cloud i.e. the meteor shower.

Because Jupiter is one of our solar system’s most heavyweight decision-makers in that respect, its immense gravitational pull will only allow us just this once to see the May Camelopardalids rain down. As Cooke puts it, “By next year, Jupiter’s gravity will have pulled it away again.”

But if the event does take place, its sheer magnitude will not go unnoticed – it will light up the entire North American continent this weekend.

And although science tells us that the speed at which the Camelopardalids will fly is almost twice as slow as that of the Perseid shower, the luminescence is expected to be much more striking because of that. Now it’s just a matter of hoping that the shower’s size, bunching and magnitude will match expectations.

And even if you’re not in North America and won’t be able to catch the show, you can always head over to a webcast on the Marshall Space Flight Center’s webpage from 11pm Friday to 3am Saturday eastern time.

Proof that Earth is bombarded by 10 times more asteroids than previously thought

© Natural News

Natural News | May 2, 2014 | J. D. Heyes

Three former astronauts have presented evidence that Earth has experienced many more large-scale asteroid impacts over the past decade than previously believed.

In fact, they say, the number is anywhere from three to 10 times more.

According to reports, a new visualization of data from a nuclear weapons warning network shows that "the only thing preventing a catastrophe from 'city-killer' sized asteroids is blind luck."

The astronaut group says that since 2001, 26 atomic bomb-scale explosions have taken place in remote locations around the world, far from populated areas, as evidenced by a nuclear weapons test-warning network. In a recent press release regarding them, the B612 Foundation's CEO, Ed Lu, said:

"This network has detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts. It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare--but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought. The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid is blind luck. The goal of the B612 Sentinel mission is to find and track asteroids decades before they hit Earth, allowing us to easily deflect them."

Preventing a major future asteroid impact

The B612 Foundation has partnered with Ball Aerospace to build the Sentinel Infrared Space Telescope Mission, which, once positioned in solar orbit closer to the sun than the earth, will look outwards in infrared to detect hundreds of thousands of as-yet-unknown near-Earth objects that are larger than 140 meters. This privately funded space craft is scheduled to launch in the 2017-18 time frame aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Leonard David at Space.com noted that bureaucratic inertia is making it more difficult for researchers to study and characterize asteroid strikes on Earth, which are apparently much more common than previously thought.

The red tape affects the use of the U.S. government's space assets that assist scientists in the study of "airbursts" like the meteor that exploded without warning over Russia in 2013. "At issue," wrote David, "is the ability to combine space data with outputs from a global network of seismic, infrasound and hydroacoustic sensors that have been deployed worldwide to provide treaty verification for a nuclear test ban."

Monitoring continues

The network, known as the International Monitoring System (IMS is managed by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization [CNTBTO]), has in recent years detected shock waves from a number of airbursts, which has provided additional evidence of more frequent asteroid impacts.

"Ideally, matching observations from spacecraft with measurements from CTBTOs infrasound detectors would give scientists more of a heads-up on what's raining down on Earth," David wrote.

In 2013, the Air Force's Space Command signed a memorandum of agreement with NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The document, signed Jan. 18, listed a number of specifics for the public release of meteor data from sources like high-flying, secretive federal government space sensors.

With the agreement, NASA's Near Earth Object Observation Program started taking in information on airburst events that were based on an analysis of data collected by federal government sensors.

"Details of atmospheric meteor explosions, as recorded by U.S. military spacecraft sensors, were posted on a publicly accessible NASA website run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.," David wrote.

Sources:

http://phys.org

http://news.yahoo.com

NASA: the only thing stopping a city-destroying asteroid is blind luck

The Extinction Protocol | Apr 21, 2014

April 2014 – SPACE - So you know how we all kind of thought that our odds of getting destroyed by an asteroid were remarkably low? Yeah, that was wrong. According to new research, the odds of a large-scale asteroid impact are actually three to ten times higher than we thought. And the only thing stopping total and utter destruction? Sheer, dumb luck. The unsettling revelation, which will be presented in full by three former NASA astronauts this coming Tuesday, is the result of a new visualization of data from a nuclear weapons warning network. The B612 Foundation found that 26 atomic-bomb-size explosions have happened around the world in (thankfully) remote locations since 2001. Ed Lu, the Foundation’s CEO, explains: It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare—but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought. The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is blind luck.

We’re not totally helpless, though. Funded by the B612 Foundation and Ball Aerospace, the Sentinel Infrared Space Telescope will head into a Venus-esque orbit around the sun when it launches in 2017. From orbit, the Sentinel should have a better vantage point for spotting rogue, humanity-destroying asteroids than we’ve ever had before. We’ll get a better picture of what this all means come Tuesday, when the astronauts present their findings at the Museum of Flight in Seattle at 9pm EDT. So just to be safe, maybe hold off on rewatching Armageddon for now. – Gizmodo

Earth Is Treating Its Inhabitants To Quite A Show for Earth Day

© Prevent Disease

Prevent Disease | Apr 20, 2014

First came a Mars closeup and a Blood Moon, and now the 2014 Lyrid meteor shower. The annual fireball show is already underway, and it's expected to continue for more than a week -- with the peak arriving Earth Day, April 22.

Coronal Mass Ejections Propelling Towards Earth

A CME propelled toward Earth by an M7-class solar flare of April 18th is still en route to our planet. Forecast models predict an arrival on April 20th with a 75% chance of polar geomagnetic storms after it hits. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured an image of the storm cloud billowigg away from the sun at ~1000 km/s (2.2 million mph).

NOAA forecasters expect the CME to trigger a G2-class geomagnetic storm, which is to say "moderate." High-latitude power systems may experience voltage alarms. HF radio propagation could fade at higher latitudes, and auroras have been seen as low as New York and Idaho during such storms.

What Are The Lyrids?

The Lyrid shower officially kicked off April 16 and should continue through April 25, according to NASA. Its peak typically lasts less than a day, and NASA says it will likely fall on Earth Day this year (Earth Night, actually). "This month's Lyrid meteor shower peaks on the night of April 22 and the morning of April 23," says Jane Houston Jones of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "But you'll spot some Lyrids any night between the 16th and the 25th. The peak rate is expected to be 15 to 20 meteors per hour."

The Lyrids are named after the constellation Lyra, because that arrangement of stars -- including Vega -- marks the place in the sky where these meteors seem to originate, at least from our earthbound perspective. But Lyra is just a convenient reference point and namesake; Vega is 25 light-years away, for example, while meteors sizzle in our atmosphere only 60 miles above the surface.

The true source of the Lyrids is Comet Thatcher, a long-period comet that last visited the inner solar system in 1861. Earth passes through its orbital path every April, crashing into a cloud of comet debris left behind more than 150 years ago. As that rubble strikes Earth's upper atmosphere at 110,000 miles per hour, it vaporizes into visible streaks of light. Thatcher, meanwhile, is far away in its 415-year orbit around the sun, and won't return to our neck of the woods until 2276.

A last-quarter moon may obscure some fainter Lyrids by brightening the night sky, but it shouldn't outshine the show completely. Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere can maximize their chances of seeing a Lyrid by fleeing urban areas, avoiding artificial lights and being patient. The odds also improve as Lyra moves higher in the sky, which is why the best viewing will occur between the final hours of Earth Day and the predawn hours of April 23. Only about 10 to 20 Lyrids are expected per hour, but the shower has been known on rare occasions to produce up to 100 per hour.

The Lyrids are relatively fast-moving meteors, unlike December's Geminids, but they also tend to be bright. On top of that, about a quarter of them produce glowing trails of ionized gas known as "persistent trains," assisting skywatchers by leaving an ephemeral trace of their path to oblivion.

For more about the Lyrids, check out the infographic below (click image for larger view), which was produced by the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization to help promote the eponymous telescope it's building in Chile:

Sources:
spaceweather.com
gmto.org
mnn.com
nasa.gov