IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, “FLORENCE” FLEW WITHIN 4.4 MILLION ...
In a week which has seen a surfeit of very bizarre news, from NASA's plans to "vent the pressure" from the Yellowstone caldera by "drilling" into it ("from whence, and with what?" one might ask), to revelations about "volcano derivatives already having been taken out against the event, to Harvey's weird behavior, you can add the story of the fly-by of the asteroid "Florence" to the list, and in this case, there's a little fuel for our high octane speculation mill as well, which many readers contributed to by sending various versions of the story.
First, the "bland, nothing to see here, move along" version of the story, complete with the usual animations to make us feel better about the "asteroid apocalypse":
Enormous Near-Earth Asteroid 'Florence' Will Safely Fly by Earth Sept. 1
But then there's this much shorter version of the story, which raises many more questions and speculations than it provides "good feelings", especially in a week that has seen NASA talking about tinkering with super volcanoes:
Huge asteroid called Florence to narrowly miss Earth on Friday
The picture here is what intrigues me, plus a little statement made in the article itself. For another picture of Florence, try this image from the UK's Daily Mail, here:
I don't know about you, but there is a "regularity" of features on this rock, plus its unusual lozenge-shape, that make me suspect that many out there will entertain that some aspects of the object are artificial in nature. It has that "Arthur C. Clarke-Rama" look to it. And I readily admit, that when I saw the picture in the second article linked above, my first thought was "Whoa!..."
But what really grabbed my attention in this otherwise bland "asteroid-flys-near-Earth-nothing-to-be-worried-about" story was this little statement that appears, more or less, out of nowhere, right at the end of the second, very short, article:
Nasa is due to test options for a planetary defence system in the event an asteroid comes onto a collision course with the planet.
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Excellent globe of Earth with weather patterns overlaid:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-22.37,2.90,393
(Note Hurricane Irma, plus HUGE funnel between tip of Africa and Antarctica.)
I wonder if this was related:
https://www.rt.com/news/402217-alien-meteorite-canada-mystery/
Since Florence orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.0–2.5 AU once every 2 years and 4 months, I think it makes a fine candidate to ‘nudge’ into some useful orbit. At 2.7 miles wide, it is big enough to test asteroid-mining techniques and hardware, right in our back yard.
If you are conservative, put it into a ‘trojan’ position of Earth’s orbit. If you have some huevos, put it into one of the Earth-Moon Lagrangian Points. Both destinations are long-term stable.
You could even rename it “Babylon 1”, especially if it is ‘hollow’…
Actual shape of Florence, as radar-ed from Arecibo on Sep 4th:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3122_Florence#/media/File:Triple_asteroid_3122_Florence.gif
It looks like an obelisk.
What better disguise of a spacecraft than asteroid-comet space debris. Unless nobody knows what you looking for nobody out the loop will be any the wiser.
Yes, Marcos disguised as an asteroid among many natural asteroids. Kind of what’s been going on with hurricanes lately; hard to tell the natural from the ones taken over by other forces. Apparently disaster capitalism it pays quite well.
By the way, how’s Irma doing?
So far, it’s the disaster capitalists perfect storm. It will march down the islands to the middle of Cuba, then make a hard right turn up the eastern seaboard. The Clinton’s get another chance to rip off Haiti; I’m sure they’re just thrilled.
The real question is whether or not it’s being “enhanced” and “steered”. The MSM knew well in advance the track it would take. Fairly easy to make accurate predictions if your causing them and there are historical precedents.
I know that by Wednesday it will be somewhere over me.
The “stock” photos of the asteroid are artists conceptions. As it flies by “astronomers will take the opportunity to capture radar images to learn more about the asteroid’s exact size and detailed surface features.”
In order to “capture radar images” with any detail, I would think you would need to be fairly close. Just what do we have orbiting Earth that we can send to do radar imaging of random rocks flying by at 4.4 million miles distance for “detailed surface features”. Why would we even care about such surface features?
Have those pesky, megalithic, builders in stone left their abandoned(?) stone spacecraft littering our Solar system? Nothing lasts like stone, not even in space.
The Chelyabinsk meteor(2013), IMHO was a warning from the Break Away contingent. A well placed meteor is the ultimate weapon..
The asteroid depiction looks like a rodent, like a rat.
Right behind the Blue Chickens comes King Rat!
When you sharpen the front of this “thing” it likes just a face.
Another celestial potato passes near the earth and NASA is thinking about consuming it? What are they going to do? Chip it? Julianne it? Smash it? Bake it?
Seriously, I suspect when NASA decides to do something about one of these celestial potatoes they will not bother telling us. No, they want plausible deniability in the event the operation turns for the worse. Then it becomes an act of God. They would also keep quiet their successes as they do not want to advertise their capabilities. It might prompt too many unpleasant questions…
If they continue to study the problem they maximize their funding on public dead-ends as they continue to syphon off monies for the real cool technology. There’s no need to kill the disaster-recovery economic system. There’s always another around the corner and it pays big!
So this might be a large size artificial craft with stone casing, a good form of protection against space debris, radiation and so on – Dr, Farrell has discussed this on previous occasions.