Blogs / Bad Astronomy

With the passage of 2007 TU24 now just hours away, and no epic disasters yet happening on Earth, I guess we are all safe now.

… or are we? Unfortunately, YouTube user IronmanAustralia has uncovered the true nature of the video I posted last week.

Well, there you have it. If only he had set it to pretentious music, then it would be useable as is by the doomcryers.

Oh– IronmanAustralia– the black helicopters will be visiting you shortly.

Sorry I didn’t blog much today, but apparently I am allergic to Florida, and knocked out a bit.

Anyway, Leonard David at the LiveScience blog has some info on the spy satellite that is going to re-enter in a few weeks. It’s not much more than rumor, but it’s interesting.

The news is buzzing that due to a loss of control, a US spy satellite is going to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere sometime in February or March.

This sucks, for many reasons. Obviously, it’s one less piece of equipment that will gather intelligence Bush will ignore.

Haha! That one was for the weenies who hate it when I make political comments.

But seriously, besides the loss of an important tool, the loss of control over the satellite means it cannot be guided in for a safe re-entry over an ocean. Satellites, especially big ones (this one is reported to be maybe 10 meters long) don’t completely disintegrate when they come back in. They break apart, and some pieces can survive. This includes very dense parts (like, say a telescope mirror) which can withstand re-entry, and ironically, very light pieces, which slow down so rapidly that they don’t have enough time to burn up. They slow to a few hundred kph and then just fall the rest of the way.

These lighter pieces include fuel tanks, which are large and hollow. This particular satellite may have used hydrazine as a propellant, which is toxic. Having some of that in a leaky fuel tank hitting the ground is not a great scenario.

However, I think it’s unlikely that it’ll hit anyone or damage property. The Earth is still 70% or so ocean, so right away the odds of hitting land are 30% at best. Moreover, most of the land on this planet is unpopulated, and where it is populated, it’s mostly lightly populated. However, this doesn’t mean the odds of it doing something bad are 0; a Soviet satellite came down in Australia a few years ago. I’d much rather know this thing will burn up over the vast area of the Pacific ocean.

Of course, the government isn’t really talking, since this was a secret mission. It’s possible more info will leak out, so stay tuned here or at UniverseToday for more info.

Hey hey BABloggees.

I’m back home now after TAM 5.5, which was, as usual, a huge amount of fun. I’ll have some stuff on that later. Promise.

I had a terrible internet connection while I was away, which was really unfortunate this time. I missed a chance to be on the Larry King show about the UFOs in Texas! Oh well.

I also couldn’t keep up with the blog, which made for some interesting situations. Most amusing were the comments left on the blog post with my YouTube video about TU 24. It’s hard not to notice that most of the comments that were arguing against me were, um, sophomoric to say the least. Downright rude and juvenile, actually. I had to delete a dozen or so for violating my very simple commenting policy ("Don’t be a jerk"). Why are so many antiscientists such boneheads?

Actually, I can guess at the answer to that.

Anyway, I’ll have more on this asteroid soon as well; radar images have been returned, and I’m sure there will be more cool info soon. This asteroid poses no threat; ironically, it’s humans misusing their brains who pose the threat.

I’m still trying to catch up with email and other things. But I’ll be be up to speed very soon. Stay tuned! Lots of fun stuff coming.