(from NBC News)
". . . An asteroid half the size of a football field will give Earth the ultimate close shave this month, passing closer than many satellites when it whizzes by. But it won't hit the planet, NASA scientists say. The asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly by Earth on Feb. 15 and zip within 17,200 miles (27, 680 kilometers) of the planet during the cosmic close encounter. The asteroid will approach much closer to Earth than the moon, and well inside the paths of navigation and communications satellites. "This is a record-setting close approach," Don Yeomans, the head of NASA's asteroid-tracking program, said in a statement. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth."
Asteroid 2012 DA14 was discovered last year by an amateur team of stargazers at the La Sagra Sky Survey observatory in Spain. Yeomans stressed that, while the asteroid's approach brings it closer than the geosynchronous satellites orbiting 22,245 miles (35,800 km) above Earth, 2012 DA14 poses no threat of a deadly collision with the planet. . . "
Would they REALLY tell us if there WAS? . . .
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Like the Catholic church in 1992, an overdue, yet impotent apology. . .
(from http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/14/showbiz/lance-armstrong-interview/index.html)
". . . For more than a decade, Armstrong has denied he used performance-enhancing drugs, but he was linked to a doping scandal by nearly a dozen other former cyclists who have admitted to doping. What Armstrong said or did not say to Winfrey could have ramifications. Some media outlets have reported that Armstrong has been strongly considering the possibility of a confession, possibly as a way to stem the tide of fleeing sponsors and as part of a long-term redemptive comeback plan. But such a confession might lend weight to the lawsuits that could await him. . . "
(from http://4thefirsttime.blogspot.com/2007/09/1992-catholic-church-apologizes-to.html
". . . 1992: Catholic Church apologizes to Galileo, who died in 1642
In 1610, Century Italian astronomer/mathematician/inventor Galileo Galilei used a a telescope he built to observe the solar system, and deduced that the planets orbit the sun, not the earth. This contradicted Church teachings, and some of the clergy accused Galileo of heresy. One friar went to the Inquisition, the Church court that investigated charges of heresy, and formally accused Galileo. . . Soon, Galileo wrote up a similar dialogue called "Dialogue on the Two Great Systems of the World." This book talked about the Copernican system. "Dialogue" was an immediate hit with the public, but not, of course, with the Church. The pope suspected that he was the model for Simplicio. He ordered the book banned, and also ordered Galileo to appear before the Inquisition in Rome for the crime of teaching the Copernican theory after being ordered not to do so. Galileo was 68 years old and sick. Threatened with torture, he publicly confessed that he had been wrong to have said that the Earth moves around the Sun. Legend then has it that after his confession, Galileo quietly whispered "And yet, it moves." Unlike many less famous prisoners, Galileo was allowed to live under house arrest. Until his death in 1642, he continued to investigate science, and even published a book on force and motion after he had become blind. . ."
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(from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/newly-discovered-small-asteroid-just-misses-colliding-with-earth-next-up-is-much-bigger-121212-asteroid/2012/12/11/51048aae-43a4-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_blog.html By Steve Tracton)
". . . (The) 4179 Toutatis asteroid (is) expected to pass within 4 million miles of Earth. As the author of this story puts it, “On the scale of the cosmos, that is a very close shave.”
But if you think that’s too close for comfort, how about an asteroid passing within just 140,000 miles (only 60% of the distance between the Earth and moon) of our planet? Guess what?... already happened earlier this morning.
Discovered only two days ago, XE54 came about as close to crashing into Earth as an asteroid can without actually doing so - close enough to be “eclipsed by Earth’s shadow, causing its shadow to ‘wink out’ for a short time,” according to Universe Today.
With a diameter of just 72-160 feet, XE54 is a far cry from the over six-mile wide asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs (and about 50% of all life’s species) 65 million years ago. But, while it’s possible an asteroid of this size would produce nothing more than a brilliant fireball as it disintegrated after entering the atmosphere, a direct hit by remaining rock chunks on a populated region could be disastrous.
Believe it or not, a surprise near miss of this sort is not especially unusual. In June 2011, an steroid estimated about 30 feet in size (“2011 MD”) passed by Earth and missed a direct hit by only 7,500 miles. An even closer encounter occurred earlier in 2011 when another small asteroid missed Earth by just 3,400 miles.
Asteroids coming this close cross through the zone of geosynchronous satellites (such as the GOES series). The chances of an asteroid-satellite collision are extremely small, though not zero.
Small asteroids such as these are difficult to discover, usually detected within a week of their closest encounter, and that’s much too little time to do anything but issue a warning about the likely locations of impact. In most, but not all cases, impacts would focus on oceans or relatively unpopulated regions.
Fortunately, asteroid strikes by ones of the size that wiped out dinosaurs are few and far between. An impact with more common intermediate-sized asteroids - dimensions larger than about 500 feet – would explode with the power of a large atomic bomb. However, large and intermediate-sized asteroids can be detected and tracked years before any close encounter with Earth. . . "
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. . . The fortified stone shelter was thought to be strong enough to withstand the trauma that would result from the earth's departing its axis. It was however, difficult to enter and not large enough to accommodate everyone. He sat on one of the bus-stop benches, brought into the First National Bank Building to seat the throngs, between his youngest son and his best friend, staring blankly at the obviously futile efforts toward protecting building's inhabitants including the blocking of all windows and doors with concrete. Catching a last glimpse of the the cloudy grey sky as the concrete wall was sliding into place, his son asked compassionately if he thought Mom had safely reached the shelter and was there a plan to re-unite when the disaster passed. He tried, however unconvincingly, to comfort his youngest in the affirmative but harbored greater uncertainty than even he wanted to admit. . .
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" . . . From now on, we are enemies, you and I. Because you will not enter me, with all
my need for you; because
you scorn my attempts at virtue; because you choose for our instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty infantile boy and give me for reward only the ability
to recognize the Incarnation; because you are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block you! I swear it! I will hinder and harm your creature on
earth as far as I am able. I will ruin your Incarnation! (from Amadeus (1984), Milos
Forman)
. . . sang about in 'The Green Green Grass of Home'
This photo of Gingerbread House is courtesy of TripAdvisor
All the perfect picket fences
And gingerbread cottages in a row
Brightly colored walls on every house
And if figure on the lawn
Peace and calm
I found where I belong
Til the murder in our Avalon
You could hear the children laugh and play
All their games on any day
Pretty Moms and Handsome Daddies
Would walk hand-in-hand down the street
Any summer night
You could never find another place
Where your life would be so good
I considered this my jackpot won
Til the murder in our Avalon
Now and air of uneasiness
Pervades everything
I can't seem to get any rest anymore
Might have been a heaven on earth
A place we could be
Safe from all the rest of the world and humanity
There was no stranger
No homicide
You killed our love
It was clearly a job from the inside
Now the trees are greener than before
But a chill is in the air
People go about their business
And everyone acts like I'm not even there
I've been told it's time to move along
And that life continues on
I've described your heinous crime in song
It was murder in our Avalon
. . . recently contained such things as tubas . . .
. . . being stolen from southern California high schools for the black market providing the instruments to the latest craze in Latino music, space junk left over from satellites and space missions orbiting the earth and not being cleaned up and federal immigration agents are shooting each other. . .
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". . . On Dec. 21, 2012, many doomsday believers fear the apocalypse —
anything from a rogue planet smashing into us to our world spinning end
over end. However, the world should expect nothing more next year than
the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, NASA says. Many people point to the end of
the Mayan Long Count calendar on Dec. 21, 2012 as evidence of the
coming apocalypse, but astronomers have been quick to stress that there
is nothing to be concerned about. According to the ancient Mayan calendar, next year's wintersolstice
marks the end of a 144,000-day cycle. This cycle, which begins at the
mythical Maya creation date, has already been repeated 12 times. The
13th will end in 2012, capping a full 5,200-year Mayan cycle of
creation. This date has long been shrouded in mystery, with many claiming that
it will bring destruction to our planet. [End
of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]
Rogue planet Nibiru?
One fear is that a rogue planet that has been dubbed "Nibiru"
or "Planet X" is supposedly aimed at Earth. Self-proclaimed Nibiru
expert Nancy Lieder, who says she is in contact with the aliens from
Zeta Reticuli, first said Nibiru would cause widespread disaster in May
2003, only to change it to There is, however, no
evidence that Nibiru is real. "Nibiru is ridiculous because it doesn't exist — it never existed as
anything other than a figment of the imagination by pseudo-scientists
who don't seem bothered by a complete lack of evidence," astronomer Don
Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told SPACE.com.
There is no basis for the claim that it might be lurking behind the
sun, as it could not have hidden from observation until now, Yeomans
said. If such a planet was headed toward Earth by Dec. 21, 2012, it
would already be visible to the naked eye.
Cosmic alignments?
There are also concerns that planets or stars might line up
in ways that will transform Earth. For instance, some theorists claim
that from our point of view, the sun will cross in front of the plane of
our galaxy on Dec. 21. However, the sun already does this twice a year,
Yeomans said. In fact, the sun will eventually cross the plane of our galaxy.
However, the sun is about 67 light-years from the galactic plane, so it
should take several million years to do so, Yeomans said. Even then,
when our solarsystem
finally does cross the plane, nothing special will occur, he added. [10
Failed Doomsday Predictions]
Some also claim that gravitational effects from planets lining up
with each other will somehow affect Earth. However, there is no
planetary alignment due on Dec. 21, 2012, "and if there were, it
wouldn't cause any problems," Yeomans said.
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