Tag Archives: asteroids

How would you make planet Venus spin?

What would be the mass, impact angle and speed to produce a 24 hrs rotation? What would make a good impactor within the solar system inventory? Assume we have the resources to destabilize one to the inner asteroids in to a collision with Venus. Is Apophis mass enough? Any other NEAR asteroid we can use? Any risks or side effects? Consequences? Would that induce the creation of a magnetic field? What effect would it have on the planet? This is hypothetical of course, I welcome your opinions.
Excellent ideas! What if instead of one big punch we try a series of smaller ones? Are there any iron rich asteroids out there? Just thinking out loud. This could be a thousands of years project. Do we have any indication Venus might have iron in it’s core?

Astronomy questions for fun?

The rocky planetesimals that we now call asteroids did not form a planet between Mars and Jupiter because

a. the asteroids are moving too fast and chaotically in their orbits to stick and form a planet
b. the gravitational influence of Mars prevents the asteroids from combining into a planet.
c. the gravitational influence of Jupiter prevents the asteroids from combining into a planet.
d. all the above
e. both “a” and “b” above

The dominant mechanism for clearing the dust and gas from the solar system was

a. impacts by planetesimals.
b. the solar wind – the Sun’s charged particles pushed the dust and gas away.
c. the Sun’s magnetic field, which directed the dust and gas away from the solar system.
d. radiation pressure – photons from the Sun pushed the dust and gas away.

What did I just see? Didn’t look like other meteors I’ve seen. Asteroid or flyby?

I was outside at around 11:45pm CST, November 11th 2010, and I saw something huge and white streak across the sky. At first, it looked like a plane, but it wasn’t flashing and it was moving way too fast. I could see a very long whitish tail, like it was, in fact, burning in the atmosphere, like a meteor, but it was way too big and actually went from view behind the eve of my house before I could see it burn out. I’m wondering if it was something like an asteroid or satellite flyby, but since I’ve never seen either of those before, I have no idea if my description would be typical of such an incident. I’ve watched countless meteor showers over the years, and have never seen one like this. I’ve even seen red ones, but none this big or close looking. It seemed so close to the ground, or just perhaps so big, that I was expecting to feel an impact a few minutes later. It went directly over my head, and came from the Northwest. I live in Oklahoma City. Anyone know what it was? Please don’t suggest it was a UFO or aliens. It was obviously a UFO in the literal sense. I looked at the Morien Institute page at http://www.morien-institute.org/skywatch2010_Q4.html, but I have no idea how to read the charts. It does state, however, for this date to expect close approaches to Earth of Asteroids 253, 3623 Chaplin, and 10050 Rayman along with the distances of their closest approaches, but once again, I have no idea how close the distances actually are, where they would be seen, or what they would look like. Sorry to go on, I’ve never seen a “meteor” that disturbed me like this.
Thanks, I made the report. It did have a train, but it didn’t look smokey, but rather like it was glowing. The train was almost as white as the ball’s head, lasted several seconds, and was about 50degrees long across the sky behind it! It was crazy! There was no sound, but I didn’t wait a full five minutes after I saw it; I didn’t know I was supposed to do that before I read it on the report page. =/

How much of an impact would the two asteroids passing the earth today made if they’d hit us?

like if one hit an urban center.

How can you distinguish between impacts on Earth caused by meteors and those possibly caused by asteroids?

How can you distinguish between impacts on Earth caused by meteors and those possibly caused by asteroids?