asteroid/comet impacts – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Astrophysicists predict origins of unexpected space objects in solar system and Alpha Centauri

Genevieve Klien — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 21:14:17 +0000

Interstellar material has been discovered in our solar system, but researchers continue to hunt for where it came from and how it got here. A new study led by Western astrophysicists Cole Gregg and Paul Wiegert recommends Alpha Centauri—the next closest solar system to ours—is a great place to start, highlighting how and why it’s a prime target.

The findings were published March 6 in The Planetary Science Journal.

Interstellar objects are astronomical material, like asteroids or comets, not gravitationally bound to a star. They can come from other solar systems and be thrown into interstellar space by collisions or be slingshotted by a planet or star’s gravity.

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Asteroid Ryugu samples suggest presence of salty water in outer solar system

Natalie Chan — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 18:06:50 +0000

Asteroids that orbit close to the Earth inevitably cause us some anxiety due to the even remote possibility of a collision. But their proximity also offers ample opportunities to learn more about the universe. Ryugu, a 900-meter diameter asteroid in the Apollo belt, has recently proven useful in our search for signs of life’s precursors elsewhere in our solar system.

A team of researchers at Kyoto University have found evidence of salt minerals in samples recovered from Ryugu during the initial phase of Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission. The discovery of these deposits, containing sodium carbonate, halite, and sodium sulfates, suggest that liquid saline water once existed within a parent body of Ryugu.

Before examining the samples, the team expected that sample grains returned from the asteroid might contain substances not generally found in meteorites. They anticipated that these could be highly water-soluble materials, which readily react with moisture in Earth’s atmosphere and are difficult to detect unless examined in their pristine state as preserved in the vacuum of space.

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Asteroid Won’t Hit Earth, But Might Hit Moon — a Potential Science Bonanza

Claudio Soprano — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 06:18:43 +0000

2024 YR4 is no longer a danger for Earth, and a (small) chance of a lunar impact could provide great science data.

“We are all rooting for the Moon!” Richard Binzel (MIT) is referring to the asteroid 2024 YR₄, which for a few weeks had remained at the second-highest-rated probability of potential Earth impact of any asteroid discovered. Now, although its impact probability has fallen to virtually zero for Earth, it still has a slight chance of impacting the Moon on December 22, 2032.

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Why Humanity Will Never Reach Type 2 Civilization

Jose Ruben Rodriguez Fuentes — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 21:22:45 +0000

The year one hundred two thousand twenty-three. A giant meteorite the size of Pluto is approaching the Solar System. It flies straight to Earth. But as the meteorite crosses Saturn’s orbit, a swarm of miner probes approaches it. The scan revealed no minerals on the object, so the searches returned with nothing.
Meanwhile, the Space Security Center in Alaska military personnel are setting up a laser. The Solar System witnesses a sudden flare and nothing remains of the dwarf-sized meteorite. Now, unless hydrogen miners on Jupiter post videos of another annihilation on social media… This is what the world will look like when humanity finally becomes a Type Two civilization on the Kardashev scale. We’ll have almost infinite energy reserves, the ability to prepare for interstellar flights, or to instantly destroy any threat. But will humanity really be safe? And what can ruin a Type Two civilization?

#eldddir_space #eldddir_earth #eldddir_homo #eldddir_animals.
#eldddir_disaster #eldddir_ocean #eldddir_bombs #eldddir_future #eldddir_tech #eldddir_jupiter #eldddir_mars #eldddir_spacex #eldddir_rockets

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Map reveals what will happen if asteroid hits most populated cities

Jose Ruben Rodriguez Fuentes — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:08:24 +0000

A terrifying interactive graphic reveals the damage the ‘city-destroying’ asteroid 2024 YR4 could cause to some of the world’s biggest cities.

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A ‘city-destroying’ asteroid has suddenly become more likely to hit Earth

Saúl Morales Rodriguéz — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 12:08:13 +0000

The odds of a ‘city-destroying’ asteroid hitting Earth in less than 10 years have risen.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 was found by NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System and it’s now at the top of NASA’s Sentry Risk Table and European Space Agency’s NEO (near Earth objects) impact Risk List.

For a full breakdown of the implications of the asteroid, head here.

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Asteroid Impact 2032 — Asteroid 2024 YR4

Greg Allison — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 04:03:31 +0000

Almost 2% chance for catastrophic impact in 7 years? What should we do?

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Asteroid impact simulation reveals climate and ecological disruptions

Saúl Morales Rodriguéz — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:23:08 +0000

A new climate modeling study published in the journal Science Advances by researchers from the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea presents a new scenario of how climate and life on our planet would change in response to a potential future strike of a medium-sized (~500 m) asteroid.

The solar system is full of objects with near-Earth orbits. Most of them do not pose any threat to Earth, but some of them have been identified as objects of interest with non-negligible collision probabilities. Among them is the asteroid Bennu with a diameter of about 500 m, which—according to recent studies—has an estimated chance of 1 in 2700 of colliding with Earth in September 2182. This is similar to the probability of flipping a coin 11 times in a row with the same outcome.

To determine the potential impacts of an asteroid strike on our climate system and on terrestrial plants and plankton in the ocean, researchers from the ICCP set out to simulate an idealized collision scenario with a medium-sized asteroid using a state-of-the-art climate model.

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Scientists Simulated Bennu Crashing to Earth in September 2182. It’s Not Pretty

Saúl Morales Rodriguéz — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 14:19:26 +0000

Simulations of a potential impact by a hill-sized space rock event next century have revealed the rough ride humanity would be in for, hinting at what it’d take for us to survive such a catastrophe.

It’s been a long, long time since Earth has been smacked by a large asteroid, but that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. Space is teeming with rocks, and many of those are blithely zipping around on trajectories that could bring them into violent contact with our planet.

One of those is asteroid Bennu, the recent lucky target of an asteroid sample collection mission. In a mere 157 years – September of 2,182 CE, to be precise – it has a chance of colliding with Earth.

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Chances of ‘city-destroying’ asteroid hitting Earth have increased

Shubham Ghosh Roy — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 19:50:34 +0000

Link :

Astronomers have also calculated a predicted impact zone that stretches from South America across the Atlantic Ocean to sub-Saharan Africa.

The asteroid has the potential to cause significant damage, especially if it lands in a densely populated area like a major city due to it being the size of another space rock that hit Earth in 1908 with a blast equivalent to detonating 50 million tons of TNT.

Though estimates suggest a very small increase in the likelihood of impact, astronomer and professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Richard P Binzel told DailyMail.com that it is nothing to worry about.

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