Astronomers Warn: Giant ‘Centaurs’ May Threaten Earth

The giant comets, termed centaurs, move on unstable orbits crossing the paths of the massive outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The planetary gravitational fields can occasionally deflect these objects in towards the Earth.

Centaurs are typically 50 to 100 kilometers across, or larger, and a single such body contains more mass than the entire population of Earth-crossing asteroids found to date. Calculations of the rate at which centaurs enter the inner solar system indicate that one will be deflected onto a path crossing the Earth’s orbit about once every 40,000 to 100,000 years. Whilst in near-Earth space they are expected to disintegrate into dust and larger fragments, flooding the inner solar system with cometary debris and making impacts on our planet inevitable.

Known severe upsets of the terrestrial environment and interruptions in the progress of ancient civilizations, together with our growing knowledge of interplanetary matter in near-Earth space, indicate the arrival of a centaur around 30,000 years ago. This giant comet would have strewn the inner planetary system with debris ranging in size from dust all the way up to lumps several kilometers across.

A decade ago, Stephen Hawking observed that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. This week, a team of astronomers from Armagh Observatory and the University of Buckingham reported that the discovery of hundreds of giant comets in the outer planetary system over the last two decades means that these objects pose a much greater hazard to life than asteroids.

The team, made up of Professors Bill Napier and Duncan Steel of the University of Buckingham, Professor Mark Bailey of Armagh Observatory, and Dr David Asher, also at Armagh, publish their review of recent research in the December issue of Astronomy & Geophysics (AandG), the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Because they are so distant from the Earth, Centaurs appear as pinpricks of light in even the largest telescopes. Saturn's 200-km moon Phoebe, seems likely to be a Centaur that was captured by that planet's gravity at some time in the past.

 

NASA's New Horizons Spots Mystery Rogue Planet Beyond Pluto

Something strange emerged when Scott S. Sheppard (Carnegie Institution for Science) and his colleague, Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, compiled data for the orbits of Sedna, 2012 VP113 and 10 icy objects that lie close to Pluto.

Similarities in the 12 objects' paths around the sun strongly suggest that all 12 are under the spell of a hulking, far-distant planet, Sheppard says.

This planet, if it exists, is up to 10 times as massive as Earth and 200 to 1,000 times as far from the sun. It's so big that it has forced the smaller bodies, which like to keep away from large ones, into unexpected paths.

This super-Earth may have begun its life in the central solar system before becoming a "rogue planet," ejected from its birthplace to exile in the outermost solar system. It may have pulled Sedna and 2012 VP113 along with it from their homes closer to the sun.

From the amount of sky area searched, Trujillo and Sheppard determine that about 900 objects with orbits like Sedna and 2012 VP113 are out there with sizes larger than 1000 km and that the total population of the inner Oort cloud is likely bigger than the Kuiper Belt and main asteroid belt.

Some of these inner Oort cloud objects could rival the size of Mars or Earth. This is because most of the inner Oort cloud objects are so distant that even very large ones would be too faint to detect with current technology", says Sheppard.

And recently, Nasa's New Horizon's probe also captured another mysterious object, a 90-mile (150-kilometer)-wide ancient body, officially called 1994 JR1 passing through the Kuiper Belt 3.3 billion miles from the sun. See first video. The spacecraft is on course for a close flyby of another Kuiper Belt object, 2014 MU69, on Jan. 1, 2019.

 

Space Object WT1190F Breaks Up Over Sri Lanka

The infamous space object WT1190F entered the atmosphere south of Sri Lanka around local time 1:19 a.m. ET on November 13, 2015 during the brightest part of the day.

Due to cloudy skies the reentry was not visible from the ground but the object was captured by a team of veteran U.S. and German observers of spacecraft re-entries aboard a plane sponsored by The International Astronomical Center (IAC) and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency.

Before the unknown object, thought to be a discarded rocket body, burned up in the atmosphere, residents on the Southern Coast of Sri Lanka heard a loud noise like an explosion.

If you look at the object then it does not really look like a discarded rocket body but more like a solid triangular object before it suddenly falls apart into two big pieces. Was it just space junk?

 

Unknown 'space object' illuminates the sky over Chita, Russia - 2nd and 3rd 'UFO' ball and WT1190F

A huge fireball has been spotted in the skies over the Russian city of Chita near the border with China. An unidentified flying object, most probably a meteorite, made three extra bright flashes before burning out, according to eyewitness accounts.

Witnesses described the incident as an unusually bright flash that illuminated the skies just after midnight on November 12. The falling object left long tail of light behind it.

“It resembled a fall of some kind of a space object,” Zvezda TV channel said, citing an unnamed witness. The phenomenon was also allegedly clearly visible from neighboring cities.

The Russian military said that no drills were conducted in the region last night reported RT.

   

The fireball comes several days after a second mysterious black 'UFO' ball has been crashed into a spanish field.

For the second time in just five days, on November 8, 2015, a mystery cylindrical object weighing about 20 kilos has fallen into fields in Calasparra, an area of Murcia with 9,700 inhabitants just a stone's throw from the site where the first black 'UFO'ball has been found on November 3, 2015.

Once again the Civil Gaurd was called in, the area sealed off until investogators could initiate the protocol known as "NRBC (nuclear, radiological, bacteriological and chemical)" to avoid any potential dangers.

It is worthy to mention that also on November 3, 2015 a similar mysterious 'UFO ball" object has been crashed on the beach of Karusa, one of the Black Sea coastal town's of Sakarya in Turkeye.

Today, Friday 13th another unidentified space object (WT1190F) is about to crash off the coast of Sri Lanka. Scri Lanka has issued a NO FLY warning and the impact is expected at 11.49 am Sri Lanka time.

Where are these objects coming from and can we expect more unidentified objects falling from the sky?

Video with Radar Images of WT1190F.

Surprising discovery: There is oxygen on Comet 67P - The comet is home to alien life?

Scientists on the Rosetta mission have found oxygen in the gas cloud around comet 67P in what they described as the most surprising discovery about the comet to date.

It is the first time that molecular oxygen - the form of the gas we breathe - has been detected on a comet, and points to a gentle birth for comet 67P some time before the formation of the solar system.

“It’s actually the most surprising discovery we have made so far on 67P because oxygen was not among the molecules expected in a cometary coma,” said Kathrin Altwegg at the University of Bern and

The finding is puzzling because oxygen is highly reactive and scientists do not expect it to hang around for long in space. “We had never thought that oxygen could ‘survive’ for billions of years without combining with other substances,” said Altwegg.

The scientists are unsure precisely how the oxygen got to be in the comet, but suspect that the answer lies in the cold and dense birthplace of the solar system called the dark nebula.

“This evidence of oxygen as an ancient substance will likely discredit some theoretical models of the formation of the solar system,” said Altwegg to theguardian, read more.

In the video below ThunderboltsProject will discuss the latest scientific papers on the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to comet 67P.

In addition to countless unresolved puzzles facing comet scientists, Thunderboltsproject discusses the problem of comet’s double-lobed shape and they talk about NASA’s New Horizons mission which has revealed that the Plutonian moon Hydra also has a double-lobed form like P67.

There are many different types of bodies in the solar system display the particular shape like Comet P67, therefore, despite scientists say it is a comet, we may wonder whether the comet is one of the artificially made space objects, created by aliens, which look like comets but in fact alien space craft, home of alien races. With the discovery of oxygen on the comet, the comet has surprised us again.

Unidentified Space Object Labelled ‘WTF’ Is About To Crash Into Earth on Friday, November 13, 2015

WT1190F is in fact a mysterious object that has baffled scientists.

Its identity is not verified yet ......or it is well hidden from the public. WT1190F - (WTF 09/11) – (WTF 9/11).

An object temporarily designated WT1190F by the observers, will enter the Earth's atmosphere on Friday, 13 November 2015. It was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey.

The object is in Earth orbit, with a period of about three weeks. Its orbit is quite well known because it was also observed twice in 2013 by the same survey team. This long observational coverage is sufficient to model its trajectory with good accuracy and obtain two interesting results.

First, the object is likely man made. The motion of this body over about two years can be modelled in detail only if the effects of solar radiation pressure are taken into account.

The intensity of this solar push is proportional to the object's area-to-mass ratio, which can therefore be estimated, providing an indirect clue to its density.

It turns out that this body has a mean density that is about 10% that of water. This is too low to be a natural space rock, but it is compatible with being a hollow shell, such as the spent upper stage of a rocket.

The second, and even more interesting result, is that the object will re-enter Earth's atmosphere in a few weeks, around 06:20 UT on Friday, 13 November 2015.

The object is quite small at most a couple of meters in diameter, and a significant fraction if not all of it can be expected to completely burn up in the atmosphere. Whatever is left will fall into the ocean about 100 km off the southern coast of Sri Lanka.

Its mass is not sufficient to cause any threat to the area, but the show will still be spectacular, since for a few seconds the object will become quite bright in the noon sky.

 

NASA predicts huge Asteroid 2015 TB145 will not hit Earth on Halloween

NASA on alert as huge Asteroid 2015 TB145 named Spooky set to pass Earth with Highly Uncertain Orbit.

The asteroid was first observed on 10 October 2015 by Pan-STARRS at an apparent magnitude of 20 using a 1.8-meter Ritchey–Chrétien telescope. On 31 October 2015 the asteroid will pass about 0.0019 AU (280,000 km; 180,000 mi) from the Moon and then pass about 0.0032 AU (480,000 km; 300,000 mi) from Earth.

Astronomers estimate the diameter of 2015 TB145, which is also known as "Spooky," to be between 950 feet and 2,130 feet (290 to 650 meters). The Halloween flyby will mark the closest known encounter with such a big asteroid until August 2027, researchers said.

The asteroid is on an extremely eccentric and a high inclination orbit,' NASA explained.

4 days after its discovery NASA gave it a code 9 condition and today, October 22, 2015, it still has a code 8 condition (With 0 being good and 9 being highly uncertain), because of its erratic orbit, NASA isn't sure where it will go, but the space agency says it's confident it will not hit Earth.

Latest update from Goldstone Radar Observatory: The asteroid is on an extremely eccentric (~0.86) high inclination (~40 deg) orbit. It has a Tisserand parameter of 2.937 indicating that it may be Cometary In Nature. The encounter velocity is 35 km/s, which is unusually high.

Note: Cometary orbits hint at a large undiscovered object.

Intrigued by the fact that long-period comets observed from Earth seem to follow orbits that are not randomly oriented in space, a scientist at the Open University in the UK is arguing that these comets could be influenced by the gravity of a large undiscovered object in orbit around the Sun.

An asteroid the size of 2015 TB145 would do major damage if it were to slam into Earth. For example, the near-Earth object (NEO) that caused the famous "Tunguska event," which destroyed 800 square miles (about 2,070 square km) of Siberian forest in 1908, is thought to have been just 130 feet (40 m) or so in diameter — about 10 percent as wide as 2015 TB145

The public will be able to track 2015 TB145 as well, thanks to the online Slooh Community Observatory and Virtual Telescope Project.

 

Pyramid Structures Discovered On Pluto's Moon Charon

NASA has released the first highest-resolution images of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, revealing grooves and impact craters, which are similar to the surface of our planet’s Moon.

The photos were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard the New Horizons interplanetary space probe on July 12.

Taken shortly before the spacecraft’s closest approach to Pluto, the images resolve details as small as 310 meters.

The first picture, released by the US space agency, was a mosaic, in which “the view moves from rugged cratered terrain, across the great faulted canyons of the Serenity Chasma, and onto the resurfaced plains of Vulcan Planum, both informally named.”

 

Link image: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pluto-moon-charon-up-close-2.png

Astronomers Discovered Mysterious Arches/Waves Racing Through Planet-forming Disc

According to astronomers, AU Microscopii (AU Mic) is a star, located only 32 light years away from Earth.

Images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the large telescope from ESO show very unusual features within the disc of the star.

In 2014, astronomers compared the latest images taken by the large telescope with the 2010 and 2011 images taken by Hubble and discovered that the latest images show unexplained features which have an arch-like structure. A structure which is quite unusual, something that never has been observed before said Anthony Boccaletti of the Observatoire de Paris, France.

Mr. Thalmann from ETH Zürich in Switzerland said that the arches are racing away from the star at speeds of up to about 40 000 km/h (24 854.85 mph) and these waves are moving so fast that it seems as if they escaping from the gravitational attraction of the star.

Astronomers said that other celestial bodies while orbiting the star are not responsible for the high speed of the arches and concluded that something else must have been involved to speed up the arches / waves which means these arches are a sign of something truly unusual.