My Coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests last fall

My Coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests last fall in Toronto

http://www.excal.on.ca/black-lives-matter-protest-in-toronto/

Why Trying to Blast Asteroids is not a good idea

So this was supposed to go in Excalibur thought I would post it here



On Monday morning at about 11:15am Jan, 23, 2015 Asteroid 2004BL86 flew by Earth at a distance of about 1.2 million kilometers. We detected Asteroid 2004BL86 back in 2004. “Asteroids in general are a very interesting aspect of objects in our solar system …when they get close to us they give us an opportunity to if you will to relive a piece of our past… their material which hasn’t changed in any substantial sice the formation of our solar system 4.5Billion years ago” “It gives us a great opportunity to examine a piece of our past” said Paul Delaney senior lecturer of physics and Astronomy professor at YorkU. 

Commenting on the how research is done on the asteroid Delany elaborated that by taking reflected light from the asteroid and passing it through a spectrograph you can analyze what its surface composition is. As the asteroid passes by the Earth scientist will determine its mass and knowing that they will be able to determine its density

Delany explained that radar imaging was being done to determine the shape of the asteroid.

“Delany said his students though not conducting research that they can publish will be able to gain very good skills that will help them with their future research by learning to find and track moving objects in space” “It’s an interesting object for the students to observe and you can actually show an object moving with respect to the background stars it the way we found Pluto for example it’s the way we find asteroids in general” “so for students to track this object down and snap images of it is instructive”

When asked why it a so important to study the Asteroid Delaney responded   “Asteroid in general are a very interesting aspect of objects in our solar system …when they get close to us they give us an opportunity to if you will to relive a piece of our past… their material which hasn’t changed in any substantial sice the formation of our solar system 4.5Billion years ago” “It gives us a great opportunity to examine a piece of our past beyond trying to just get a better understanding of the universe as a whole .“The comets nucleus … is of primordial material it has remained unprocessed since its formation 4.6 Billion years ago you got a piece from the Nebula in which the Earth, The Sun and the other planets in our solar system formed you are now literally extracting as much information about that piece of our history as you possibly can” The same material Delaney explained has been changed on Earth but on the comet it has remained close to as it was 4.6 Billion years ago. Delaney continued saying this would give us great insight into the material from which our plantery-system formed including us Humans this would be a great way to do it.

When asked about possible threats to Earth from Asteroids and possible responses that have been devised to counter them Delaney responded. Delaney when asked on nuking an asteroid explained it would not be practical.

Delaney explained the spacecraft had to be launched in 2004 for so that for over 10 years they could continue picking up the necessary momentum by gravity assists (think of it as slingshotting around a planet) to catch up to Comet 67P which was traveling close to 60,000 kilometers per hour, and was going to get faster as it travels closer to the Sun. Delaney further explained; The Rosetta and Philae  were both mainly automated since their launch in 2004. Since the fastest way we can communicate is by the speed of light which is about a billion kilometers per hour, and the Comet 67P was about half a billion kilometers away it would take about 27 minutes to communicate with the spacecrafts thus Philae  had to be automated to land safely on the comet.

 

M Raza

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