The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News 18FEB2014

Argentina Fireball Explodes Causing Earthquake.
Posted to YouTube by BPEarthWatch 24,825 views
UPDATE 1-Earth marks close encounter with enormous asteroid
Slooh Space Camera tracked the approach of the asteroid as it raced past the planet at about 27,000 mph (43,000 kmph), starting at 9 p.m. EST (2 a.m. GMT, Feb. 18), the robotic telescope service said in a statement on Slooh.com. The Dubai Astronomy Group provided Slooh photos of the part of the sky ...

Watch Tonight's Near-Earth Asteroid Fly-By Live, February 17, 2014 - San Diego Science ...
examiner.com
Interestingly enough, tonight's scheduled asteroid flyby arrives almost exactly one year after the February 2013 explosion of a meteor over Russia last ...

Huge Asteroid Heads Toward Earth Tonight: Where To Watch Its Journey Live
ibtimes.com
The big event comes almost one year after a meteor unexpectedly exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia. This caused mass chaos, destruction and ...

Huge Asteroid to Fly Safely By Earth Monday: Watch It Live - SKYE on AOL
aol.com
The approximately 65-foot-meteor (20 m) exploded 18 miles (29 km) above the ground, and it released the energy equivalent of about 20 atomic ...

Space Dust Is Filled with Building Blocks for Life
Space.com
A study of teeny-tiny meteorite fragments revealed that two essential components of life on Earth as we know it, could have migrated to our planet on ...

Russia wants to hand out meteorites to Olympians
CBS News
February 17, 2014, 8:23 AM |Meteorite medals are being reserved for Olympians who win gold on the anniversary of the meteor strike over Russia last ...

Bright meteor or Fireball at 20:08 on 16 Feb - Observing - Widefield, Special Events and Comets ...
stargazerslounge.com
Bright meteor or Fireball at 20:08 on 16 Feb - posted in Observing - Widefield, Special Events and Comets: I was wondering if anyone had seen the ...

Meteor Strike Over England! Huge Daytime Fireball Brighter Than The Sun Lights Up England ...
beforeitsnews.com
Meteor Strike Over England! Huge Daytime Fireball Brighter Than The Sun Lights Up England Skies. Monday, February 17, 2014 13:34. % of readers ...

Bright meteor or Fireball at 20:08 on 16 Feb - Observing - Widefield, Special Events and Comets ...
SGL New Topics
I was already looking to the west for the ISS when I saw A really bright meteor/fireball in a WSW direction. It was quite low and headed diagonally ...

2014 The Year of "CERTAIN Uncertainty" ™; Meteors, Asteroids, Comets, and MORE!!

The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News 15FEB2014

Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2000 EM26 Zipping by Earth on Close Approach on February 17
Posted on YouTube by nemesis maturity· 34,771 views
Potentially hazardous asteroid 2000 EM26 zipping by Earth on close approach on February 17

PhysOrg - 9 hours
On February 17th a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), 2000 EM26, with an estimated diameter of three football fields (270 meters) and traveling at ...

The Huffington Post UK - 7 hours Massive 'Potentially Hazardous' Asteroid To Fly Over Earth (And You Can Watch Live On The Internet)An asteroid three times the size of a football pitch travelling at 27,000 miles power is about to pass close to Earth. And you can watch live ...

Responding to Potential Asteroid Redirect Mission Targets
One year ago, on Feb. 15, 2013, the world was witness to the dangers presented by near-Earth Objects (NEOs) when a relatively small asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere, exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia, and releasing more energy than a large atomic bomb. ...

Russian Meteor Blast Thrust Asteroid Danger into Spotlight 1 Year Ago Today - Yahoo News UK
yahoo.com
One year later, the impact of the surprise Russian meteor explosion is still being felt all over the world. On Feb. 15, 2013, a 65-foot-wide (20 meters) ...

Search for Chelyabinsk Meteor Fragments to Be Over by Spring 2014 - Astro Watch
astrowatch.net
The search party looking for heavy fragments of the Chelyabinsk meteor, which still remain in Lake Chebarkul in Russia's Chelyabinsk region, is to be ...

Meteorite gift too spacey for Olympics, rules IOC

Reuters via Yahoo! Singapore Sports - 10 hours
By Karolos Grohmann SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - The International Olympic Committee have shot down plans to give Saturday's medal-winning ...

NASA scientist arrives to scan Apollo 14 Moon rock
Natural History Museum
The NASA Apollo sample curator Ryan Zeigler has made a whistle-stop visit to the Museum to scan a four-billion-year-old meteorite from the Apollo 14 ...

Meteor Showers - Fall of a Thousand Suns
fallofathousandsuns.com
Dozens of meteor showers are listed in chronological order on this site...

2014 The Year of "CERTAIN Uncertainty" ™; Meteors, Asteroids, Comets, and MORE!!

Fewer large asteroids- 24OCT09

Fewer large asteroids than as predicted

And now, from the pessimists...

A fine theory and simulation. A shame it doesn't
correspond in any way to reality. The impact rate
on terrestrial planets starts out very high at the
beginning of the solar system, declines for half
a billion years then rises again in a final flurry of
accretion and clean-up, at 3.9 billion years ago.
The rate declines in a fairly uniform manner
thereafter, but about 600-to-400 million years
ago, it suddenly climbs to a level not seen since
3.4 billion years ago, and it is STILL at that
higher level today.

This is from the actual impact record, not having-
fun-with-your-computer-model science kit. The
data is from impact spherules in the lunar regolith
and the graph of the impact rates throughout
time can be found on page 660 of:
http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/lunar_impacts_Nemesis.pdf

More information here:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_nemesis08.htm

True, this researcher thinks it might be proof of
a big comet infall due to an undiscovered companion
small star to the Sun, but so what? It might be, but
the immediate mechanism is likely to be asteroidal
breakup.

The timing matches perfectly with the breakup of
the L-chondrite parent body, the largest asteroidal
breakup in the past few billion years or so. The
evidence and timing for that is presented here:
http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Mar04/fossilMeteorites.html

At about 480 million years ago (Ordovician times),
the meteorite fall rate on the Earth was 100 TIMES
GREATER than it is today, during the peak of that
breakup episode.

The history of the formation of the 50 or so asteroidal
families unambiguously identified does not match this
pretty little theory in the least. Reality is contingent,
accidental, and randomly chaotic, and NOT "well
described with a logarithmic decay law."

Source: Sterling K. Webb, USA

Asteroid to Fly By Earth Wednesday 17MAR09

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2085

Asteroid to Fly By Earth Wednesday
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
March 17, 2009
PASADENA, Calif. -

A small asteroid will fly past Earth early tomorrow morning (Wed., March 18). The asteroid, 2009 FH, is about 50 feet (15meters) wide. Its closest approach to Earth will occur at 5:17 a.m. PDT(8:17 a.m. EDT, 12:17 UTC) at an altitude of about 49,000 miles (79,000kilometers)."This asteroid flyby will be a good viewing opportunity for both professional and amateur astronomers," said Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The asteroid poses no risk of impact to Earth now or for the foreseeable future."NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth. The Near Earth Object Observation Program, commonly called "Spaceguard,"plots the orbits of these objects to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.For more information, visit: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

Media contact: DC Agle/JPL 818-393-9011

ASTEROID BUZZES EARTH 17MAR09

Space Weather News for March 17, 2009
http://spaceweather.com
ASTEROID BUZZES EARTH: Newly-discovered asteroid 2009 FH is flying past Earth tonight only 85,000 km (0.00057 AU) away. That's a little more than twice the height of a geosynchronous communications satellite. Experienced amateur astronomers in North America can photograph the 20-meter-wide space rock racing through the constellation Gemini after sunset on March 17th. It should be about as bright as a 14th magnitude star.

Please visit http://spaceweather.com for an ephemeris and updates.

This is the second time in March that an asteroid has flown so close to Earth. On March 2nd, 2009 DD45 passed by only 72,000 km away. Measuring some tens of meters in diameter, 2009 DD45 and 2009 FH are approximately Tunguska-class objects, meaning they pose no global threat but could cause local damage if they actually hit Earth. In years past, asteroids of this size often passed unnoticed, but recent improvements in asteroid surveys have resulted in growing numbers of space rocks caught in the act of near-Earth flybys.

Renewed Interest in in Asteroid Defence 14MAR09

Near Miss Renews U.N. Interest in Asteroid Defence By Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46089

NEO News (03/12/09) UN Report on NEO Threat Mitigation http://planetarydefense.blogspot.com/2009/03/neo-news-031209-un-report-on-neo-threat.html

NEO News (03/07/09) Newsworthy NEAs: 2009DD45 & 2008TN166http://planetarydefense.blogspot.com/2009/03/neo-news-030709-newsworthy-neas.html

Surprise Asteroid Buzzed Earth Monday, National Geographic, March 2, 2009, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090302-asteroid-earth.html

EDITORIAL COMMENT Cosmic Near-miss, Times of India,MArch 11, 2009http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/EDITORIAL-COMMENT--Cosmic-Near-miss/articleshow/4253466.cms

Source: Paul Heinrich

Near-Earth Astroids PHAs 6FEB2009

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.
http://spaceweather.com/

On February 6, 2009 there were 1022 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Feb. 2009 Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid//Date(UT)//Miss Distance//Mag.//Size
2009 BK58//Feb. 2 //1.7 LD//17//30 m
2009 BW2//Feb. 5 //8.4 LD//20//40 m
2009 BE58//Feb. 10 //8.6 LD//16//225 m
2006 AS2 //Feb. 10//9.2 LD//15//370 m
2009 BL58 //Feb. 11//4.8 LD//17//55 m
1999 AQ10 //Feb. 18//4.4 LD//13//390 m

Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach.