You've guessed it judgment day is it hand once again, now I don't want to upset any of are viwers reading this on the internet but its not even in a good way. No deadly plague of zombie's willing to eat the brains of every living creature, no half wolf half vampire mutant creature trying to suck out are blood and convert us, no advanced alien species coming to earth to destroy all of are human race nothing but a shitty asteroid.
Since 2002 astronomers have spotted the asteroid NT7 on a direct collision course with earth, before you go mental and start looting your local shops for food supplies the predicted date is 1st February 2019 so you've got plenty of time yet. we've created an official Guide to surviving armageddon in Part 2 but first up here comes the science.
Although astronomers say the object definitely merits attention, they expect more observations to show it is not on an Earth-intersecting trajectory. This asteroid has now become the most threatening object in the short history of asteroid detection
Dr Benny Peiser
It was first seen on the night of 5 July 2002, picked up by the Linear Observatory's automated sky survey programme in New Mexico, US.
Since then astronomers worldwide have been paying close attention to it, amassing almost 200 observations in a few weeks.
Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, said that "this asteroid has now become the most threatening object in the short history of asteroid detection".
NT7 circles the Sun every 837 days and travels in a tilted orbit from about the distance of Mars to just within the Earth's orbit.
Detailed calculations of NT7's orbit suggest many occasions when its projected path through space intersects the Earth's orbit. Researchers estimate that on 1 February, 2019, its impact velocity on the Earth would be 28 km a second - enough to wipe out a continent and cause global climate changes.
However, Dr Peiser was keen to point out that future observations could change the situation.
He said: "This unique event should not diminish the fact that additional observations in coming weeks will almost certainly - we hope - eliminate the current threat."
According to astronomers, NT7 will be easily observable for the next 18 months or so, meaning there is no risk of losing the object.Observations made over that period - and the fact that NT7 is bright enough that it is bound to show up in old photographs - mean that scientists will soon have a very precise orbit for the object.
Dr Donald Yeomans, of the US space agency's (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told us: "The orbit of this object is rather highly inclined to the Earth's orbit so it has been missed because until recently observers were not looking for such objects in that region of space."
Regarding the possibility of an impact, Dr Yeomans said the uncertainties were large.
"The error in our knowledge of where NT7 will be on 1 February, 2019, is large, several tens of millions of kilometres," he said.
Dr Yeomans said the world would have to get used to finding more objects like NT7 that, on discovery, look threatening, but then become harmless.
"This is because the problem of Near-Earth Objects is now being properly addressed," he said.
Maybe this NT7 could actually be on a collision course with Earth, the only way to find out would to be to use some sort of comet chasing spaceship to travel in the same flight path as NT7 and track its actual positon and location for the 1st February 2019.
With NASA always being one step ahead they already have such a wonderful device know as the Comet Nucleus Tour also known as Contour for short. This Contour project was not gonna be cheap but just think of it in the long run Contour could be responsible for saving the world, because we can't rely on Elijah Wood all the time thats alot of pressure for one young lad. This Comet Nucleus Tour cost United States Tax payers $159million dollars.
$159million dollars does seem to be a lot of money for any country alone, especially for something that you rarely hear about we'll I hate to break it to you but the reason you don't here about it, is because errr... it fell to bit after about 6days in space. All that money flushed down the toilet, did NASA not think of testing this Contour before blasting the shitty thing into space. This amount of money blown and what have we acheved basically sweet FA. Atleast I wanted to see a Comet eatting Spaceship, a Death Star or a Giant Zeus lazer attached to the moon for $159million dollars.
If Bruce Willis with his Team of Drillers would have been of this Contour we'd all be quite literally fucked, Thats why we've took the time out and created a guide to survival click on the next icon to view Part 2 the Phoenix Lords guide to surviving armageddon.
