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December 14, 2005

Right place at the right time

We made it again just happened to be the right place at the right time another near miss. No it was not a potential car crash or another accident, no terrorist either! Almost got hit by another big piece of space garbage. In fact over the past week we have been close to 3 pretty large rocks or technically PHA Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, Dec 5 distance 143,313 miles, size 114 ft , Dec. 9 distance 525,481 miles size 65 ft and Dec 14 distance 1,886,954 miles size 1213 feet. I know what you are saying yah but 143 thousand miles is a long ways away and you are kind of right it is almost as far as the moon, although when you consider that the earth moves 1.59 million miles on its orbit around the sun every day its only a few hours away. Again I am assuming its either ahead of us or behind us on our orbit, when it could be around us in any direction. However being a few hours away from being eliminated as a species of the earth is still scary. Assuming these passed in front of our path around the sun, the rock on Dec.5 was 2 hours 9 minutes away, Dec 9 was less than 8 hrs away and the major rock on Dec. 14 was a little more than 28 hrs away.

If you think we have made it through 3 of these think again there are over 740 of these being tracked that will come within several million miles from the earth with new ones being located and tracked all of the time.

Actually the earth does get hit by about 25 tons of space garbage every day generally dust and sand from space most of which burns up and gives us an occasional shooting star. We made it again just happened to be the right place at the right time another near miss. No it was not a potential car crash or another accident, no terrorist either! Almost got hit by another big piece of space garbage. In fact over the past week we have been close to 3 pretty large rocks or technically PHA Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, Dec 5 distance 143,313 miles, size 114 ft , Dec. 9 distance 525,481 miles size 65 ft and Dec 14 distance 1,886,954 miles size 1213 feet. I know what you are saying yah but 143 thousand miles is a long ways away and you are kind of right it is almost as far as the moon, although when you consider that the earth moves 1.59 million miles on its orbit around the sun every day its only a few hours away. Again I am assuming its either ahead of us or behind us on our orbit, when it could be around us in any direction. However being a few hours away from being eliminated as a species of the earth is still scary. Assuming these passed in front of our path around the sun, the rock on Dec.5 was 2 hours 9 minutes away, Dec 9 was less than 8 hrs away and the major rock on Dec. 14 was a little more than 28 hrs away.

If you think we have made it through 3 of these think again there are over 740 of these being tracked that will come within several million miles from the earth with new ones being located and tracked all of the time.

Actually the earth does get hit by about 25 tons of space garbage every day generally dust and sand from space most of which burns up and gives us an occasional shooting star.