This is an interesting topic that I’ve been blogging about recently. Apparently there’s this asteroid which missed Earth on its last trip through our orbit and is now headed for Mars. Astronomers say that now, there is a 1/75 chance that Mars will be hit. Now, these usually aren’t good odds, but in cosmological terms, those are great odds. Here is an article which discusses the implications; what it would mean for Mars and what we could learn about asteroid/terrestrial planet collisions if this really does happen.
I’m really curious to see what will happen
Has anyone else heard anything about this?
the artical talks about what happened in Siberia, if you ever heard of it a huge explosion went off in the sky releasing unrecorded ammounts of energy but there is no crater and almost no witnessess.
It was probably a comet or a small meteor which exploded before it hit the ground, that is why there was no crater, but miles of flattened trees. This asteroid, if it hits Mars, might make a similar explosion (but I’m skeptical, since Mars’ atmosphere is much less dense than Earth’s is). Either way we could lean a lot by watching this impact, if it does end up happening that is.
I have heard of this going to happen. Now from what I’ve read it might be a sign of another asteroid hitting earth in 2012. BUT I’m pretty sure that won’t happen. It will be interesting indeed.
To be honest I’ve never understood the correlation that some people put between large chunks of rock or ice flying through space, and the year 2012…that is to say, I’m pretty sure it won’t happen either
The exciting part for me is that we have telescopes on Earth and in orbit of Earth, as well as rovers on the surface of Mars…so we are in a position to learn quite a bit from this.
kt, the idea of the world ending in 2012 is sensationalism. no where in any aztec or mayan or whatever calandar or text does it state the world will end in 2012, but that we will shift from one era to the next. that could be in the form of political change on the world stage, conscious transformation, or simply that the most novel event in the history of mankind will take place on that date.
all horse doo-doo as far as im concerned.
but horse doo-doo or not, the “world ending” theory has no basis in anything besides sensationalism.
I understand that the World Ending is unlikely in 2012. LE and I had a little convo a while ago saying that if the destruction does happen then it is because man kind made it happen because we thought that something was going to happen. We’ll
see, only time can tell.
The importance is that we might have a chance to observe something similar to the Tunguska event as it happens, which is pretty fascinating
Also, Mars is pretty similar to earth - so we can learn a lot about what might happen if an asteroid were to hit Earth by observing a similar impact on Mars.
It’s something like ours…thinner, different mix of gasses, but more similar than say, Jupiter’s atmosphere, Jupiter being the only other planet we’ve actually observed an impact like this on (“on” isn’t really the right word to use with Jovian planets, but whatever). We could stand to learn a lot more from this in terms of what’s relevant to our survival than we did when we observed the shoemaker-levi 9 impact with Jupiter.
And bear in mind that Mars’ atmosphere isn’t the only thing we should be thinking about…Mars has polar ice caps, probably once had liquid water, has a day of about 24 hours, and its surface area is about the same as Earth’s continental surface area.
