Is there really a huge comet heading to earth?
400469
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9907/28/asteroid.newser/
701683
My opinion is that we would have to change course of an asteroid headed for Earth.  That means that we would have to detect it years in advance.  With enough notice, we could build a Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) system.  Actually we would have to build several and attach them to the asteroid and start pushing.   They would need to be refueled, so we have to make several visits.   If successful, a project like this would be a real boon to the space program, the economy, and scientific knowlege.
96388
No. But there will be one that comes pretty damn close. If you use a search engine like Yahoo! you can find out about the near miss that happend not too long ago (I think around November 1998). It was never on the news for good reason.  But we had a close call that could have wiped us all out. Check it out. Its very interesting. The site even give you a scale to show the asteroids proximity to earth, its course and what day it will pass by again. Hope that helps.
437156
Sure, the main theory right now is that of a large meteoritic impact, first seriously proposed back in 1980. It fits the requirement of a rapid and sudden kill-off event. What killed the dinosuars? Well the immediate effect of a large asteroid impact would be global firestorms. The ejecta reaches low earth orbit and then superheats as it re-enters the atmosphere. This pretty much covers much of the planet in fire. Other bad things happen, toxic metals in the air and water, dust obscuring the sun, many bad things, but the main killing factor is the global fire storm.\n\nAs scientists we really like the asteroid impact theory as it is supported with the following evidence:\n\n1. The boundry layer in which the extinction occured is ultra-rich in the element irridum. These high concentrations of irridium are not found on earth, but match very well to those of meteoritic samples that we have. This boundry layer with irridium has been found all over the globe.\n\n2. Shocked quartz deposits have been found in the regions near central to lower north america, indicating a large shockwave propagated across the area\n\n3. Tiny glass beads have been found in the same regions, with larger ones more concentrated near the Yucatan. Thes glass bead are most closely related to objects we call Tektites, a glass that forms from meteorite impact ejecta. (cool science thing: you can get tektites for a couple dollars at any rock shop!)\n\n4. Tsunami deposits from that era have been found in the gulf of mexico region, indicating massive tidal wave events\n\n5. A crater caused an impact large enough to cause all of these things has been found right on the coast of the Yucatan, centered on Chicxulub, and dating to the right time period.
889751
Possible, yes.  Likely, no.  We know the orbits of the satellites we put up pretty well.\n\nHowever, there IS a lot of junk orbiting the Earth - pieces of spacecraft, nuts, bolts, etc - and they are orbiting fast.  Being hit by a fast-moving piece of space trash is something they have to keep in mind and try to account for when building shuttles.
287295
I once heard something about a meteor or comet. Don't believe any dates about the end of the world. Jesus said Himself that "no man knows the day nor the hour" when He will return. So don't worry 'bout it.
902686
For some octagenarians, the comet is a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity, My late father was born in 1904 and saw the 1910 comet as a six year old and he willed himself to live long enough to see it again in 1986, as an 82 year old, and died a happy man, 2 years later.\n\nThere are three possible answers: the comet, the Halley crater on the Moon and the Halley crater on Mars, \n\nInformation on the comet is plentiful. Information on the Mars crater is scant.\n\nThere was also the Halley Armada, sent out to investigate the comet in 1986. If you count objects we have put in space as space objects. If you do, that is a further six objects, though only the Aramada is named after Halley, not the individual probes. So maybe that is a total of 4 not 9,\n\nHALLEY RESEARCH STATION\n\nThere is also a Halley Research Station, located at 75°35′S 26°34′W, on the Brunt Ice Shelf floating on the Weddell Sea in Antarctica which is a British research facility dedicated to the study of the Earth's atmosphere.\n\nMeasurements from Halley led to the discovery of the ozone hole in 1985. \n\nPresumably the Antarctic station is named after Halley because he spent 1676-78 at St Helena, studying and cataloguing the stars in the Southern Hemisphere to complement Flamsteed's work in the Northern Hemisphere. *(In 1679 Halley published Catalogus Stellarum Australium which included details of 341 southern stars. \n\nTHE HALLEY CRATER ON THE MOON\n\nWikipedia states that ...\n\nThe crater has a diameter 36 kilometres and a\ndepth of 2.5 kilometres. \n\nHalley is a lunar impact crater that is intruding into the southern wall of the Hipparchus walled-plain. To the southwest of Halley is the large Albategnius crater, and due east lies the slightly smaller Hind crater.\n\nThe rim of Halley crater is somewhat worn, and a scar in the lunar surface passes through the western rim, forming a valley that runs to the south-southeast, near the rim of Albetagnius. The interior floor of Halley is relatively flat.\n\nTHE HALLEY ARMADA\n\nThe Halley Armada is a group of six space probes sent to examine Comet Halley during its 1986 sojourn through the inner solar system. The armada consisted of one probe from the European Space Agency, two probes that were joint projects between the Soviet Union and France, two probes from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan, and a probe from the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration.\n\nProbes involved (in order of closest approach):\n\nGiotto, the first space probe to get close-up color images of the nucleus of a comet. (ESA) \n\nVega 1, which dropped a balloon probe and lander on Venus before going on to Comet Halley. (USSR/France Intercosmos) \n\nVega 2, which dropped a balloon probe and lander on Venus before going on to Comet Halley. (USSR/France Intercosmos) \n\nSuisei, also known as PLANET-A. (ISAS) \n\nSakigake, Japan's first probe to leave the Earth system, mainly a test of interplanetary mission technology. (ISAS) \n\nInternational Cometary Explorer, originally ISEE-3, was rechristened with a new mission to explore comets. (NASA)\n\nHALLEY'S COMET\n\nI suppose, finally, I should say a few things about the comet. \n\nHalley's Comet was the first to be recognized as periodic. Having perceived, from a study he undertook of comets, that the observed characteristics of the comet of 1682 were nearly the same as those of two comets which had appeared in 1531 (observed by Petrus Apianus) and 1607 (observed by Johannes Kepler in Prague), Halley concluded that all three comets were in fact the same object returning every 75–76 years. \n\nAfter a rough estimate of the perturbations the comet would sustain from the attraction of the planets, he predicted its return for 1757. Halley's prediction of the comet's return proved to be correct, although it was not seen until 25 December 1758 by Johann Georg Palitzsch, a German farmer and amateur astronomer, and did n
1026139
It's Asteroid 2003 YN107, and it has been looping around the earth for seven years. :)\n\nEdit: Well, according to NASA as of June 9, 2006 anyway ^_^. Oops, I've just read that it's about to leave the earth; it was just corkscrewing around the planet.\n\nYeah, I think Sunil's right, its Cruithne.
797289
Hmm,...  better chance then a Comet,.. not as dangerous as a Comet,...\n\nAlthough I enjoy the Advertisement where the old guy is like "  Global Warming in 20 years *train honks in background and you figure out he is on train tracks with it heading towards him*  NOT MY PROBLEM"  then he hopes off and a little girl is standing behind where he was about to get hit.\n\nI don't think this is something I could prepare for or care about.  Also you might get some people here that will fight with you about how the South Pole doesn't exsist because Santa doesn't live there or something.\n\nAgain,.. nothing we could do and hopefully not my problem.  But HEY,.. if it actually hit the South Pole hard enough (which it will hopefully break down before getting there) then maybe some people will get an unexpected Tropical Vacation before the flood of cold water decreaces temp of Earth and as some project would send us into an Ice Age again.
798707
Interesting question samsam.\n\nMost people's immediate reaction would be to say that "of course it isn't".\n\nBut I can tell you that the earth increases in mass by 2 tons every single day !\n\nIt is estimated that around 20 tons of space debris in the form of dust, micro-meteorites, ice, and sometimes larger particles, hits the earth's atmosphere very day. Most of this burns up, but an estimated 2 tons of it will find its way to the ground.\n\nI will leave the physicists and mathematicians amongst you to calculate if the resultant changes in gravity will alter our orbit enough to destroy the Earth before the Sun explodes into a red giant !
517283
That is the BIG question!  When will it happen?  No one knows and there are only guesses.  Some believe it will not happen as a one big one because the Bible foretells us that it one hundred pound rocks will fall from the sky.  Scientist say we are past due for a big one to hit because the earth was hit so many millions of years ago. \n\nI do not think sitting around and worrying about it will be a productive and worthy of our attention.  When it happens it will happen.  The chance of it happening in our life-time (compared to the millions of years since the last one) is so small that it is not worth computing.  \n\nWe have plenty of people being dooms-day prophets, we need to be more optimistic and looking for how we can improve each others lives for the here and now.
434413
falling star means comet.
1068267
Relax!! On the NASA/JPL website where all such objects are tracked and listed, the asteroid you mention has such a vanishingly small chance of striking Earth that it's not even given a risk factor. The object (2004 XP14) has been tracked for two years and its orbit precisely plotted and absolutely no danger at this late date exists for it to strike Earth. To do so, its current orbit around the sun would have to be drastically altered and there's nothing that can do such a thing.
556842
The truth is ...\nAn asteroid discovered just weeks ago has become the most threatening object yet detected in space. \nA preliminary orbit suggests that 2002 NT7 is on an impact course with Earth and could strike the planet on 1 February, 2019 - although the uncertainties are large. \n\nAstronomers have given the object a rating on the so-called Palermo technical scale of threat of 0.06, making NT7 the first object to be given a positive value. \n\nFrom its brightness, astronomers estimate it is about two kilometres wide, large enough to cause continent-wide devastation on Earth.
690955
Go onto the Net and search for NEO's (Near Earth Objects) and you can download all the Data you need. Generally we are hit by a very large body every 200,000 years. Check out Tunguska in Siberia on the Net, where a comet exploded in the upper atmosphere, flattening 100,s of 1000,s of square kilometres of forest in 1908. JULES
266868
Yes, it is virtually certain that asteroids have hit earth. First of all, earlier in the history of the solar system there were probably many more asteroids than there are now, so the odds of a collision were greater. More recently a large asteroid impact is credited with having led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Other planets and their moons show many craters, which provide evidence for asteroid impacts. On earth these are destroyed by weathering. The June 1997 issue of Sky and Telescope has an article on this subject in which they estimate that a very large asteroid impact occurs once every 100 million - 1 billion years (the earth is 4 billion years old), and a large asteroid impacts once every 1 - 100 million years.
22142
There is not a speciic comet that you will be able to see soon. Expect some meteor showers to be coming in your area. A good site that I recommend is: www.heavens-above.com