A near miss - and nobody said
 

An asteroid which may be as big as a ten-storey building has passed close by the Earth, astronomers say.
The object, known as 2009 DD45, thought to be 21-47m (68-152ft) across, raced by our planet at 1344 GMT on Monday

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7921279.stm

It makes me wonder whether we would be told if 'the big one' is coming
...so much for 'open government' and 'freedom of info':rolleyes:
...are they afraid of mass panic?
...and would we run riot?

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Space rock makes close approach

testing

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Reading your link Margaret I thought it must be April Fools Day!....specially when seeing the image of "the big one"


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...a_jaxa_226.jpg

LOL!
Now I reckon if that was on it's way It would make anyone panic! :eek::D:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

'According to the U.S.-based Planetary Society, the space rock was discovered only two days ago in the sky Rob McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia, when it was "a dim speck about 1.5 million kilometres away" the group wrote on Tuesday.'

Giant spacerock passed 72,000 km from Earth Monday

'Don't panic! Don't panic!

http://www.queensparkrangersfc.com/0809/cjones.gif

Well, okay, we should have been allowed to panic, at least for those two days...or party like it's Armageddon.

'Hello can I have a cab back to the Stag please?'

:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

FIO Margaret, where's Andrew when you need him:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

It is in the same size range as a rock which exploded over Siberia in 1908 with the force of 1,000 atomic bombs.
The biggest dog terd ever seen

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Blimey, you're older than you look.

Was it a school trip?

:p

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Thought I felt a drought,anyone hurt?:hidewall::end:

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

naughty editing:)

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Yes, please forgive me.:o

After all, it's not the end of the world.:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

and there's more -
Is Nibiru Approaching?
Well, prepare for yet another possible apocalypse because, they say, Nibiru is once again heading this way - and will be here soon.

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Margaret, we've nothing to be afraid of in this Country, because if our Gordon can save the world, saving us in Britain will be easy peasy:D:rolleyes:

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

It's not a near miss; it's a near hit .... a collision is a near miss .... ;)

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Why chance causing Mass Panic? after all it missed.

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Crikey we were missed by a large spaceborn pan deposit. :eek: Would made a great splash thats for sure. :D Now what would a really big deposit in the pan do I wonder? Well apart from having a lot of people on their knees praying. :rolleyes:

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Maybe the government were hoping it would solve the banking crisis(and the issues about Fred the Shreds pension) forever!

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Very good... :D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

We could use his ego to deflect it. :D Either that or his head to break it up. :p

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

leave the guy alone, its not his cock up (that happened before he left) Would YOU give it back if the dummies give it you? i certainly would NOT.;)

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

There might be something in it. But niether side is going admit that the all senario is fubar and unworkable.

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Don't know about you Spugs but most of the country have been on their knees praying for months now, a few extra Hail Mary's and Our Fathers wouldn't have been an hardship to ward of a meteorite:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

yer clutching at straws............Prayers don't work, we still got Dingles in accy.:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

The biggest dog terd ever seen;

if thats a dog terd i woud'nt like to see the size of the dog, Margaret you'll have to get on to the council for bigger dog dirt bins soon

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Well your right cashy not even prayers can rid us of Dingles:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Oh come on DD don't start that old dog dirt bin thing again, Margarets only just got the presant ones fitted:D

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

The meteorite was the answer to their prayers. The bankers paid someone on high in order for it to miss thus allowing them to enjoy their hard sorry ill earned cash. :D Suprised certain world leaders aint been gettin on the band wagon.

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

According to my sciencey-degree friends at university, that isn't big at all and it wasn't particularly ground-breaking news.

I think it'd be quite interesting to see something big actually hit the earth and cause chaos. Obviously not good, but interesting all the same.

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Yes blazey , there was also a time when a certain Dr Mengale thought it would be interesting to see what happened if he injected colored dye into new born babies eyes. :rolleyes:

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

Well that is the problem with humans isn't it, we're driven by greed and the desire to gain more and more intelligence (mostly).

I'm pretty sure similar nonsense to Mengale's 'studies' has been carried out on animals for the sake of cosmetics. If humans become as meaningless to someone as animals then we can expect stuff like that to happen.

Taking advantage of the Jews and the other minorities for the sake of science isn't that different from people taking advantage of people as slaves and Britain isn't innocent of all the cruelty that has been carried out against humanity, or any country for that matter (to bear in mind you aren't in England and will probably throw that back at me!)

I was talking about this issue of the holocaust today and how people always refer to that as the worst act of evil against humanity or however you wish to refer to it but to be truthful, generally lots of BAD happens and it shouldn't really be put on any sort of scale because it is all generally BAD.
War is BAD, yet thousands of our young men and women sign up to fight in the Armed forces and we consider that something to be proud of, but its only something to be proud of if we see what they're fighting for as a good thing. German soldiers, in the same way mostly saw what they were fighting for as a good thing.

Perhaps this is almost a bit of a quasi-realist view... which is what I happen to be writing an essay on right now :p I'd love to be able to go to sleep.

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

i didnt know who dr mengale was (by name, i know of the nazi dr tho) so i googled it and i really wish i hadnt :(

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

why ems? people should be aware of what these monsters were capable of n did, agree it aint nice,don't forget this aint centuries ago, its in my parents lifetime, it may be just fancyfull but maybe the more know,the less chance of people allowing it to re-occur.

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

You should know better than making statements like that Spugs, you'll be giving Gordon ideas, just another way for him to save the world:D:rolleyes:

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

My Dad said very little about his service in the war, but he did show contempt for the Germans until the day he died, the only experience he did mention more than once was the fact that Germans actually booby trapped their own dead, knowing full well the the allied forces would stop to bury them, now that was sick:(

Re: A near miss - and nobody said
 

He wasn't the only one to do it but I suppose it always helps to have one specific person to point the finger at.

I think it makes people feel better if they have someone specific to blame. And most of today's concern over the Holocaust is beyond actually solving any problems now, it's all about just looking a certain way.

I had a seminar yesterday where we were asked if we could justify the Holocaust in terms of ethical theories. There are a lot of academics who do put forward quite convincing arguments. And it isn't because they think what happened was right in anyway, but beyond just saying 'well Hitler was crazy/bad' there are ways to see how rational human beings can be capable of doing things and believing they are correct.

I find that quite interest and I see very little point in ranting about how terrible the Holocaust was because people KNOW that without even making much of a fuss about you.

The sentence '6 million Jewish people died' is enough to make people think 'that is bad', but it is much more worthwhile to consider the justifications of what happened, and as a result destroying those arguments as you build them (if you can) and actually saying something worthwhile on the subject.

People shouldn't be so afraid to speak against the norm an avoid criticism, it leads to a very boring life. WE don't live in those circumstances, so we should be able to do so without being shot down, and there is no pun intended there but lets face it, if we did live in Nazi Germany we would be shot for doing such a thing.

I've studied the Holocaust in many contexts throughout my education, less British children will learn about it in the class room because it has been taken off the syllabus, or at least it had when I last saw the issue reported on.

Is that a bad thing?

Well it was a landmark genocide, if I can call it that and not sound like I'm merely thinking of statistics, but there are many genocides which don't get the attention they deserve, some happening now, in this current lifetime, and not very much actually gets said about them.

That for me is a bigger problem, mainly because the Holocaust, as important as it was, was over 60yrs ago and hasn't made enough of an impact on the world to stop future genocides and people are still giving it more importance than the genocides which are much more close to today and those murdered in those are never mentioned.

What I find particularly odd is that Hitler is considered to be the worst when so many people have been killed under Mao and even Stalin that its just bizarre.

Syria and Rwanda are the most recent that I can think of, and obviously killings in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and though the numbers don't compare in relation to death toll, I think it is a damn sight more worrying that AFTER Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pinochet and all the other 'popular' (as in well known/talked about) leaders which caused so much death we can still see genocide occurring today.

THAT is what is worrying. Not the possibility of people FORGETTING the Holocaust, but the fact that people aren't seeing what is happening TODAY.

Sorry for the rant.