http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7449


[Start quote]

A comet has been added to the list of potentially threatening near-Earth objects maintained by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Comet Catalina 2005 JQ5 is the largest - and therefore most potentially devastating - of the 70 objects now being tracked. However, the chances of a collision are very low.

...

Collision course?

On 26 May, JPL's unique orbital calculation software determined that Comet Catalina was on what could possibly be a collision course with Earth, though the odds of such an impact were small: just 1 chance in 300,000 of a strike on June 11, 2085. Based on the 1 kilometre size estimate, that would produce a 6-gigaton impact - equivalent to 6 billion tonnes of TNT.

Astronomers expect the addition of further observations to the calculations to rule out any possibility of a collision, as happens with most newly-seen objects.

But that has not quite happened yet. With an extra week of data, the comet's predicted pathway actually drew even closer to making a perfect bull’s-eye with the Earth - its predicted path passes within 400 kilometres of where the centre of our 12,700-km-diameter planet will be around that time.

However, uncertainty in the exact timing of the comet’s pass through the line of Earth’s orbit dropped the odds of an impact to about 1 in 120 million. That is very low, but the observations so far cannot categorically rule a collision out.

...

[End quote]

Scary... even if this one doesn't hit... one will probably hit, perhaps not today, not tomorrow.. but give it time, it has happened before. It would be interesting to see what would we do? Would we humans build something to smash it? Would chaos and anarchy rule the earth?
Time to go to bed I guess..

If this is old news (oxymoron?), please disregard.

BTW, here's a link you might find interesting:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/p2005jq5.html

Happy crunchin'

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Scary... even if this one doesn't hit... one will probably hit, perhaps not today, not tomorrow.. but give it time, it has happened before. It would be interesting to see what would we do? Would we humans build something to smash it? Would chaos and anarchy rule the earth?
Time to go to bed I guess..

If this is old news (oxymoron?), please disregard.

BTW, here's a link you might find interesting:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/p2005jq5.html

Happy crunchin'

Hope we've devised a means to divert it before it comes to that!

:)

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But wait a momment, even if the re-observations do in fact confirm no impact and adjust the intersection of the orbits say by 1 million km, that's still pretty close for a comet.

This should just about be the most incredible sight in the night sky. Imagine how bright and wide the tail will be. Think of the meteor storm if we pass through the tail.

I doubt very much that I will be here in 2085, but I hope my children and their families will enjoy the show.