COMET WILL DEFINITELY NOT HIT EARTH – NASA Rather worryingly, US space agency NASA has out of the blue issued a strident denial that an approaching comet poses any threat to planet Earth. "COMET ELENIN POSES NO THREAT TO EARTH," begins the NASA statement emailed to the Register. "Often, comets are portrayed as harbingers of gloom and doom in movies and on television, …
represent NO THREAT AT ALL to the delicate meatbags who will be residing there in the event of cometary apocalypse. Any rumours that our potential customers may have heard regarding unreliable aggression inhibitors and downgrading of the Asimov laws to mere voluntary guidelines are TOTALLY FALSE.
Yeah, that did kinda' suck after all the hype -- kinda' like Kohoutek.
Still, back in '94, Hale-Bopp was pretty sweet right about twilight in the eastern US for a while -- notwithstanding a bunch of idiot cultists who misunderstood the message "wait for the comment 'Hail Bob'!" and committed suicide..
I too was seriously disappointed by Kohoutek, and after Halley was so far I feared I will never see a big comet with my own eyes, so it was very nice that Hale-Bobb and Hyakutake (in 1996) came along. The latter was IMHO the more impressive of the 1990's comets, at least where I live.
...1997? Damn, that's right; thanks for refreshing my memory. I also recall the press brouhaha over a cult that thought the appearance of Hale-Bopp was a signal that their alien overlord was coming to pick them up in his mothership, so they all committed suicide with Jello shooters.
It was Shoemaker-Levy that crashed into Jupiter after being broken into fragments by Jupiter's gravity in '94; I remember some very spectacular HST images of that.
Thanks.
You got it all wrong...
Bruce Willis does comets and shit....
Chuck Norris does everything else.
Vin Diesel?
Vin Diesel could pwn all the lot of them, the comet included with his left little finger nail.
Vin FTW, I tell you... I mean...
Just look at the man...
Just look at the man....
When I grow up I wanna be a VIn Diesel
So, yes, who named it and why? And, if so insignificant, why do they not give press releases for astronauts turds on intercept (or non-intercept) trajectory?
It wouldn't be so bad but there is little left to loot...so will just have to settle for mass orgy.
It will just leave the $3000 worth of packages just inside the glass front doors at 7am without a signature and we won't even see it.
*never had a delivery from actual Commet, but multiple other couriers have done this to us. To quote our major supplier "they are in a world of their own".
joining the cover up... the comet will kill us all
By adding to the cover up , your esteemed publication shows it has joined the new world order in suppressing the truth
Must go now, seems the medication I take to control my paranoid delusions is wearing off
Mines the one with the tin foil hat in the pocket
"Comet Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth on 16 October, at which point it will be 22 million miles away – more than 90 times as far off as the Moon."
that means the moon is only 244444 miles away. What's the moon doing that close? Didn't NASA have to fly millions of miles in the 60s to land on the moon? This tallies with my personal observations that recently the moon is appearing a lot bigger in the sky than I remember as a kid. Of course it has to fall down eventually but surely not this year. Does the moon go up and down in a cycle? It's funny how NASA even mentioned the moon there when the story was about a comet noone even knows about. I recommend watching the astronomological news closely from here on in.
A quick shufti with your favourite search engine would have told you that the moon is 356400 km to 406700 km from the earth (it wobbles a bit due to the cheese gases escaping in random directions) (that's 2577283 to 2941024 brontosauruses, 13137 to 14992 PARISes, or 221451 to 252706 miles).
And for those moon landing images it was just a bit of driving to the Nevada desert, not hundreds of thousands of miles in some tin can on top of a huge rocket.
"...which starts with two bored airline pilots flying a plane; suddenly one of the reaches for the intercom and says "Ladies and Gentlemen - this is your captain speaking. There is absolutely nothing to worry about."
Which, in turn, reminds me of an old Monty Python bit: "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard East Scottish Airways. There is no need to panic."
You can buy my special anti-comet elixir for only US$9999 - based upon homeopathic techniques, it has some cometary gasses (CN) to make you resistant to the effects of the comet.
You can also buy a space in my special comet-proof bunker for only US$999999.
Don't worry, the bunker is hermetically sealed so that no nasty comet gasses can get in.
(fail for the idiots worrying about this....)
I have to wonder if anyone is stupid enough to ask essentially "If it isn't a risk and it isn't important why aren't you talking about it more?"
Because it isn't important enough to warrant the effort and there really isn't anything interesting to say you complete pillock.
Some people are too stupid to deserve the internet.
To misquote the head of the CBI "Half of the population are below average intelligence". This is the reason NASA also had to produce a disclaimer for the Mayan prediction of the end of the world in 2012 http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html
"Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."
Shame about the incredible population.
Though I well remember Bennett in 1970 as a spectacular naked eye object (West in 1976 was brighter, but not as well placed for viewing). Since then, they've mostly been fuzzy blobs - even through binoculars. We're overdue for a good one.
But we should also remember that night skies were much darker before 20th century street lighting, and that we rely on "artists' impressions" for older comets.
Tell me, was the email subject line in caps? Bet it wasn't.
Not loving the recent caps-friendly headline tendency, FWIW. What's wrong with an exclamation mark? Or are you finding this idiom necessary, lest the shouty headlines be confused with Ones! About! Yahoo!?
Only a fraction less annoying than your love of <strike> tags that renders your headlines gibberish in most RSS readers.
And just for the sake of adding something of value(?) while detracting, the redacted wordy answers are here:
http://www.space.com/12657-comet-elenin-nasa-questions-answers-facts.html
You INTENTIONALLY omitted this, from NASA's FAQ
"So you've got a modest-sized icy dirtball that is getting no closer than 35 million kilometers (about 22 million miles)" said Yeomans. "It will have an immeasurably minuscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean's tides than comet Elenin ever will."
That's HIS subcompact car, which he does not deny may be some DARPA developed doomsday tidal force and conspiracy theory generating subcompact. Now we understand the bailout of General Motors and Obama's directions to emphasize smaller cars. We're talking about a subcompact car that generates more tidal forces than one of the most worrying comets in decades!
Maybe it is a Comet itself! Or a GALAXY!?!?! Or a Fit.
Im pleased to say i am inviting selected applicants to my personal bunker and a rock bottom price of only £20,000 per seat. We have to see photographs of the applicants beforehand and interviews will take place for these places. Preference with go to 19 year old blonde girls, applications on a clean £50 note to....
You forgot to ask "If it hits the moon, will it act like a fancy pool shot and pocket the moon into the Pacific?"
Then of course a nod to the others that have already stated this is precisely what they would say if the comet was definitely going to chew off a sizeable chunk of our planet. At least they didn't say "What comet? There's no comet on a direct collision course with the earth.."
The first three letters of comet Elenin are "ELE". As anyone who has seen the fine piece of apparent future history that is Deep Impact can tell you, ELE stands for "extinction level event" occuring when a heavenly body (like, say, a comet) collides with Earth! Plus we have an African-American (who is unfortunately not Morgan Freeman) in the White House!!
So, with this information in hand, I will bid you all adieu and retire to my mountain survival bunker, or maybe just the bar on the corner. In closing, let me say.....
RUN!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!! Anarchy!!! Anarchy!!!!!!!
But NASA told me to tell you to tell Bruce that its definitely not about the approaching comet, which is absolutely not going to hit Earth causing a 2000 foot high tsunami and enveloping the earth in a nuclear winter-inducing shroud of dust for the next 6 years--no sir-eee!!!
In fact, NASA said that they don't even know why they mentioned the comet at all, and could they please have all my canned and dried foods for some kind of office party involving putting the world's leading scientists in a former salt mine, which I thought was kind of a strange request--but of course I gave them the food.
Anyway, if anyone sees Bruce Willis....
Here is Harold Camping's response from a press conference on Monday 23 May, 2011 at Family Radio headquarters, Oakland, California:
"On May 21, this last weekend, this is where the spiritual aspect of it really comes through. God again brought judgment on the world. We didn't see any difference but God brought Judgment Day to bear upon the whole world. The whole world is under Judgment Day and it will continue right up until Oct. 21, 2011 and by that time the whole world will be destroyed,"
...and I know _I_ am, but you wouldn't believe how the Drudge Report reacts to this stuff. It's flat-out comical -- sad, but comical. If a NEO is predicted to pass so much as a million miles from Earth, Drudge runs a 72 point bold ALL CAPS headline across the top of the page reading OH, MY GOD! IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US! with a production still from "Deep Impact" and that stupid-assed animated spinning police light over it.
And realising there's not a lot left of it after all that ablation by the Sun. Hale-Bopp wasn't that much of a spectacle either - at least from Australia
Two comets that have stood out here were Hyakutake (1996) and McNaught (2006). In fact McNaught was the most spectacular astronomical sight I've ever seen; like the famous Donati's Comet (1858), it had a huge, curved tail that spanned half the sky.
Clearly we have to send "Flash" Gordon, college polo player, to Comet Elenin, where he can overthrow its evil tyrant, and use the comet's radium-powered rockets to divert it from its collision course with Earth!
I mean, that's what this is all about, isn't it?
But since the comet is passing by in November 2011, it's clearly thirteen months too early for the end of the world... as any idiot can plainly see.
damned if you dont.
Poor NASA, if they hadnt said anything about this comet, sooner or later people would start saying the LACK of news meant a cover-up and that it was going to hit us.
If anyone wants me I will be sitting in a supertanker full of food and teenage girls over the deepest part of the Pacific ocean on that day... purely coincidental I assure you!!
This post has been deleted by its author
That was why Krugman was going on about whipping up a Space Aliens Menace to kickstart the economy through war spending.
He knew it!
I KNEW it!
And the US doesn't have a Project Orion, a Space Shuttle fleet or a warehouse full of Gamma Ray Lasers to show them. We are gonna lose to four-legged Space Pizarro.
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