AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY CHRISS STREET

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs estimates that 2.7-mile wide extinction event size an asteroid named Florence will miss Earth by just 4.4 million miles on Friday, September 1.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California began tracking Near-Earth-Objects (NEO) in the early 1990s. They track thousands of NEOs, but the largest is asteroid ‘3122 Florence’, named for the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale.

Despite many small NEOs harmlessly entering our atmosphere and burning up before hitting ground, the average size of comets or asteroids whose orbits have come into proximity with Earth are only about a quarter mile wide.

The Spitzer Space Telescope estimates Florence is 2.7 miles wide, or almost half the size of the 6-mile asteroid that hit the Earth 65.5 million years ago and caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction Event (K-T extinction).

Hurtling at a speed of about 10-20 miles per second, the asteroid strike had the force of 300 nuclear bombs and was the third largest in the history of the Earth. It created the 110-miles diameter by 12-mile deep Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and wiped-out the dinosaurs and 75 percent of all the animals and plants on the Earth.

Scientists theorize that the K–T extinction was caused by ash from the impact covered the Earth within two weeks, blotting out solar energy and hindering plant photosynthesis. As the plants died, the herbivores died. Then the carnivores that eat the herbivores died.

Omnivores, insectivores and scavengers survived the extinction event, because of the increased availability of their food sources. The mammals and birds that survived the extinction fed on insects, worms, and snails, which fed on dead plant and animal matter. The largest air-breathing survivors of the event, crocodiles that are semi-aquatic and can survive for months without food and are still capable of living as scavengers.

Breitbart News reported in February 2013 that over 250 people were injured when a 36-foot wide meteor travelling at a speed of 35,000 miles per hour began burning up 18 miles above the central Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

The approach of the object was undetected by any observer. As it burned up it created an air burst in the atmosphere, unleashed a flash of light that was brighter than the sun and causing a shock wave that shattered windows in six surrounding towns. Fragmentary pieces hit the ground and for the first time in recorded history hit some individuals. Although no one died, three suffered serious injuries.

Florence is expected to pass on Friday within about 4.4 million miles of the Earth, or about 18 time the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The next time Florence’s orbit will bring it back to the vicinity of the Earth is after the year 2500.

The Jet Propulsion Lab believes that eventually the Earth will suffer a minor or major asteroid hit. JPL hopes to gain tremendous insights about how they can eventually destroy any asteroid the size of Florence that could strike the Earth.