by Peter Dockrill

April 29, 2019

from ScienceAlert Website

Italian version

It came out of nowhere...

Just a few short weeks ago - in an alternate reality otherwise identical to our own - it popped up on our screens: a giant asteroid hurtling through space, and headed straight for us. At least, maybe it is. Nobody really knows.

In this hypothetical scenario, the facts on the ground change fast. At first, scientists say there's only a one-in-50,000 chance this thing will hit us.

Within weeks, those odds become one in 100...

There's good news and bad news about this approaching object, called 2019 PDC. The good news is 2019 PDC doesn't exist at all. It's a completely fictional, imaginary apocalypse. The chance of impact, in actuality, is zero.

The bad news is that 2019 PDC - or an NEO (Near Earth Object) very much like it - so easily could be real.

Because of that, this week NASA, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and international partners including the European Space Agency (ESA) are conducting a drill:

a 'tabletop exercise' to simulate how a planetary asteroid emergency would play out in real time.

Orbit of Asteroid 2019 PDC.

(CNEOS)
 

NASA's been running these simulations for years, and with good reason:

Earth, as it happens, is in the midst of an epic asteroid surge compared to the relative peace and quiet the planet experienced many millions of years ago.

When unexpected space rocks do appear on our scopes, sometimes we only get hours' notice of their existence before they streak past.

While the chances of a catastrophic impact are exceedingly slim, we're nonetheless unprepared for surprise asteroid strikes, which is why NASA is continually working on plans to help improve our NEO detection and mitigation capabilities.

Part of that was the formation in 2016 of a new Planetary Defence Coordination Office (PDCO), which will help run the drill exercise this week, designed by researchers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Centre for NEO Studies (CNEOS).

"The first step in protecting our planet is knowing what's out there," says the ESA's Head of Planetary Defence, Rüdiger Jehn.

"Only then, with enough warning, can we take the steps needed to prevent an asteroid strike altogether, or to minimize the damage it does on the ground."

In the 2019 PDC scenario - being run as part of the 2019 Planetary Defence Conference held in Washington, DC from Monday through to Friday - the object is first picked up on 26 March 2019.
 

Projected risk corridor.

(CNEOS)
 

Unlike the 150 or so NEOs scientists discover each month, initial calculations suggest 2019 PDC is a 'Potentially Hazardous Asteroid', estimated to range up to 300 meters in size and potentially on a collision course with Earth.

Further analysis reveals the most likely date of impact will be 29 April 2027 - eight years to the day from today - and projects an estimated 'risk corridor':

a red line of danger spanning the globe where the asteroid, if it hits at all, may hit.

That red line neatly traverses the middle of the US, in addition to other land masses including Africa, and the latest information to hand suggests 2019 PDC has about a 1 percent chance of hitting Earth.

The simulation, which begins today, will run until the end of the week, and see participants from NASA, FEMA, the ESA and more all receive daily briefings and updates on the asteroid's trajectory, as the world's real space agencies combine forces to confront an unreal but not unimaginable threat.

As part of the exercise, participants will discuss things like asteroid deflection opportunities (if they exist), address funding issues, and consider how to manage the public's reaction to an Armageddon only eight years away, as well as drawing up plans for pre- and post-disaster relief.

For the first time in one of these asteroid emergency drills, you'll be able to keep track of the hypothetical situation as it evolves, with daily updates at the @esaoperations Twitter channel and the ESA's Rocket Science blog, plus you can keep tabs on 2019's PDC orbital trajectory at the CNEOS website.

"This topic has been the theme of many epic films and TV series," ESA Operations tweeted.

"But what really are the chances of an asteroid impact and what are our options? Bruce Willis unfortunately isn't on Twitter."

Of Asteroids

...and Electrostatic Generators
by Joseph P. Farrell
May 03, 2019

from GizaDeathStar Website

I'm always amazed at the ability of the "Gizars" to spot intriguing information, especially if it concerns technologies that don't normally "show up on the radar" of the lame-stream corporate controlled media, nor, for that matter, on the radar of the alternative research field.

But L.G.R. spotted this one, and passed it along.

And it's a doozie.

"It" in this case is a patent filing from 2017, rather blandly titled "Electromagnetic Field Generator and method to generate an electromagnetic field", interestingly enough the assignee is the US government via the Secretary of the Navy.

There are several intriguing things about this patent application, not the least of which are the first two paragraphs:

The invention described herein may be manufactured and used by or for the Government of the United States of America for governmental purposes without payment of any royalties thereon or therefore.

And why would the USA want to do that?

Well, paragraph two provides the answer:

To date there are more than 100,000 potentially dangerous asteroids (Near Earth Objects) which cross the earth's orbit, with only, 11,000 having been catalogued and currently tracked.

 

Earth will be impacted again and again; it is only a matter of time and circumstance. Therefore, there is a need for an effective method to deflect or destroy these potentially dangerous asteroids.

That, of course, reveals itself to be the purpose of the patent, and of course, if you're like me, you've probably also noted the more or less "coincidental" appearance of this patent within a year of the Trump Administration's creation of a "space force".

After reviewing a few other methods of deflecting asteroids in paragraph three, the patent description observes that,

"the techniques described... would only affect 'small' asteroids, on the average diameter levels of approximately 100 meters."

Implication:

we need something that can take care of the really big ones, and that is not subject to the hazards of kinetic targeting (with its chances for a "miss") and the resulting fragmentation of the asteroid, which could be as dangerous as the asteroid itself as many potential impacts would replace just one.

And thus,

"the present invention is directed to an electromagnetic field generator and a method to generate an electromagnetic field with the needs enumerated above," i.e., something strong enough to "deflect or destroy" a big asteroid.

And when you read the details in the filing, you might, like me, be thinking that "this sounds vaguely familiar" and that it might "ring a Bell."

Oh, and in case you missed it, it's also a handy thing to have around for some "other" purposes:

It is a feature of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for generating an impenetrable defensive shield to Sea and Land as well as Space-based military and civilian assets, protecting these assets from such threats as Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles, Radar Evading Cruise Missiles, Top Attack for main battle tanks...

Oh... did we mention, it's capable of a little solar manipulation as well?:

...as well as counteracting the effects of solar-induced Coronal Mass Ejections...

(Paragraph 0012)

Presumably it will do all this by generating electromagnetic fields, which, to accomplish all these feats, would have to be extraordinarily strong, but not to worry, because the,

"the design of energy generation machinery with power output levels much higher than those currently achievable by conventional means, is made possible with this invention."

(Paragraph (0012)

At this point, the patent goes on to outline how it's going to do all of this, and behold, it does so by spinning a plasma, utilizing shells in a sphere of piezoelectric ceramics doped with radioactive materials.

Of course, I'm over-simplifying, but the end result of all of this is that this creates the Mossbauer Effect of vibrationally stimulated and cohered releases of gamma rays.

All of this, according to paragraph 30, will generate field strengths per square meter of (get this) 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts.

That's ten septillion to one hundred octillion watts... per square meter...

I don't know about you, but this seems to me to be quite a lot of deflection. Maybe even enough to "grab and throw"; it's a handy thing to have around to "snag" an asteroid, mine it, and then throw it away.

And you could make it do double duty:

when you're done mining it, you could throw it at someone you don't like...