News Stories relating to "asteroid"

Newswise - An asteroid the size of three football fields is scheduledto zoom past Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029, coming closerto us than many telecommunications satellites in orbit. Itwill be visible to the naked eye in several countries, butit's not likely that a large space rock like this one willactually hit the Earth,...

As usual, astronomers are reassuring us that the asteroidToutatis, which will be heading our way in September, won?timpact the Earth. And also as usual, warnings about animpending impact are flying across the internet. Who'stelling the truth?

Alan M. MacRobert writes in Sky & Telescope that whileastronomers insist it will be a flyby...

A meteorite impact helped wipe out the dinosaurs 65 millionyears ago. Now satellites have discovered that anotherimpact the same size hit the Earth more recently, whenhumans were alive. It didn't end our species because it hitduring an ice age and sank into the Antarctic ice. Much morerecently, in England, a woman was hit by a meteorite...

The dinosaurs died when an asteroid hit the Earth, but we're determined not to. Astronomers say they're having success in finding every large asteroid that poses a threat to life on Earth. The next step will be to look for smaller objects that could cause localized destruction if they impacted the Earth. But once they find them, what can they...

Amateur astronomers can receive awards of $3,000 for discovering and tracking asteroids that may impact the Earth, according to new legislation approved by the House of Representatives. While this is great, with our recent near-misses, it would be more reassuring if the government would allocate enough money to hire professional astronomers to...

U.S. astronomers are warning of a possible asteroid collision with the Earth in 2014. They've discovered a large, fast-approaching asteroid that could hit the earth on March 21st of that year?but the chances of it happening are almost one in a million.

The rock measures approximately two thirds of a mile across, which is one-tenth the...

It could come next year, or not for a million years, but some day an asteroid will be heading this way. If an impact couldn't be avoided and the result would be devastating, would you want to know? Or would you want the government to keep silent, so you could enjoy your final days? As asteroid hunters become more efficient, this moral quandary...

Despite the fact that asteroid NT7 is scheduled to wipe out much of humanity and send us back to the Dark Ages when it hits us on February 1st, 2060, there is almost no money available for research on how to deflect it. NASA has identified and tracked 2,027 asteroids and comets that might come close to Earth.

The U.S. spends between $3.5...

U.S. early warning satellites detected an explosion in the Earth's atmosphere June 6, with an energy release estimated to be 12 kilotons, equivalent to the blast that destroyed Hiroshima. Observers feared that either India or Pakistan had set off a nuclear bomb. Fortunately, it occurred over the Mediterranean Sea. If the bright flash and...

Asteroid NY40, which was just discovered on July 14, will beflying near the Earth on Sunday, August 18 and will be closeenough to see through binoculars. Unlike NT7, which is nowdue to hit us on 2060, there's no chance that this one willcollide with Earth.

"Flybys like this happen every 50 years or so," says DonYeomans of NASA. The last...

A huge crater has been discovered hundreds of feet beneaththe floor of the North Sea by seismic mapping equipmentdesigned for petroleum exploration. The 12-mile-wide crater,called Silverpit, is 60 to 65 million years old, going backto the end of the dinosaur era, and was created by theimpact of a massive meteorite. This means that not just one,...

An asteroid was discovered a few weeks ago that astronomersthink will impact the Earth 18 years from now. The asteroid,known as NT7, has an orbit that's on a collision course withEarth and if nothing changes, it will hit us on February 1,2019.

From its brightness, astronomers thinks it's over a milewide, which is large enough to...

First tourists were paying big bucks to visit the International Space Station?now the Japanese are arranging for people to autograph an asteroid.

The Japanese Muses-C spacecraft is the first craft designed to visit an asteroid and return to Earth after taking geological samples. It will be ready for takeoff in November or December and...

Sooner or later, a catastrophe from space will wipe out almost all life on Earth, according to Dr Arnon Dar of the Technion Space Research Institute in Israel. A particular type of exploding star going off anywhere in our region of the Universe would devastate our planet.

Using the latest statistics and calculations, Dar says that a...