Do you believe the earth could enter the astroid belt any time soon?

Question

Recently, I have noticed more and more asteroids flying by. Do you think we could be entering an asteroid belt? I have also noticed many rocks around here that may have not been glacial rocks but rather an asteroid dump. Do you think that asteroids have to have burn marks on them in order to be asteroids? The Van Allen Belt may cause debris (such as asteroids) to burn only when certain angle of earth's entry is achieved. Could this information be kept from the public and a concern now that we all know about 2012 and what happened to the dinosaurs 13,000 years ago during the asteroid belt's last attack! Any information would be helpful, thank-you!

Well I did hear this on Discovery Channel (last week's show)there was a dinosaur kill 13,000 years ago. These dinosaurs were killed by asteroid fragments. So if this happens ever so often, whether it is from the asteroid belt or some other rogue belt well it would be good to track. If the astronomers are not jumping up and down it may be coming in from the odd angle behind the sun. It seems that we should put more satellites up in space to discover these comets/asteroids before they become planet killers. There is a guy who uses solar arrays to ever so slightly move these light weight beasts out of the way. Is this possible for the smaller/multiple attacks? ty!

Well there is a lot more to ponder. If we are far away from the asteroid belt then perhaps the asteroids could be loosing gravity in the belt and then pelted to the earth similar to a slingshot full of rocks? This could happen from time to time, perhaps if a solar flare should happen to go through the asteroid belt. I am open to ideas...what could have caused these devastating extinctions from time to time through time?

Could be the asteroid belt is loosing orbital intregity? Could this be why I noticed that rather large potato shaped meteor or asteroid a few years ago. Hopefully that solar array unit will work! I hope we dont have a watch out for raining asteroid warning...what would we do? Hide underground?

Answer 1

You have noticed asteroids flying by? How? Where do you see them? There are no more asteroids flying by now than there have been earlier in the solarsystems history. If anything it is less. We are getting better at finding asteroids which might be why you seem to notice more of them but they have always been up there.

We cannot enter the asteroid belt. It is located in between Mars and Jupiter. Nothing can make earth go out that far. Many asteroids have very elliptical orbits that make them cross earths orbit. There are many of those but they are the only ones we need to worry about.

The dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. That kind of event occur about once every 100 million years so the next "attack" is many millions of years away. 13000 years ago nothing special happened. I don´t know where you got that from.

The Van Allen belt has nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. It is just a belt of electrons from the sun trapped by earths magnetic field.

Answer 2

I believe you are confusing asteroids and meteors, which are totally different things. Asteroids are fairly large bodies (1 km or more in diameter) which orbit the Sun, mostly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in an area called the Asteroid Belt. Meteors are small flashes of light in Earth's upper atmosphere caused by very small particles, pea size at maximum, entering the atmosphere and becoming incandescent. These have been frequent this past week because of the Geminid meteor shower. But these are really tiny compared to asteroids.

You can't see asteroids without a telescope, and many are too faint to be seen without long exposure photography, so there's no way you would be seeing asteroids. As for finding meteorites on the ground, these are extremely rare; most of the "meteorites" which get reported to museums turn out to be "meteorwrongs": volcanic rock, slag from smelters, etc.

2012: this is media hype, with no scientific basis whatsoever!

The dinosaurs became extinct 65 MILLION years ago, probably due to stray asteroid, but there have been no comparable asteroid strikes since then, nothing even close.

Answer 3

Dinosaurs have been gone for millions of years (not thousands).

There are not more and more asteroids passing be. We have better telescopes so that we see more and more (because we wee the smaller and smaller asteroids that we could not see before).

The Van Allen belts have nothing to do with asteroids (or meteoroids) entering (or not) Earth's atmosphere.

The information that you describe does not exist. Therefore was it "kept from the public?" Yes and no. It is difficult to hide something that does not exist. It is also difficult to "reveal" something that does not exist, unless you want to lie.

What do we know about 2012? That some hoaxers are trying to impress ignorants by playing up yet another end-of-the-world scenario.

21 December 2012 is the end of one (of five) Long Counts in the Mayan Calendar. On the next day, will be the first day of the next Long Count. It is a bit like December 31, 1999 in our calendar (remember Y2k? That is when all our computers blew up and we all died).

There will NOT be an alignment of the Sun and the Galactic center (it will be still more than 5 degrees off) and the closest point-of-approach is not in 2012 (the Mayans were a bit off in the determination of the precession cycle).

Planet Nibiru (which does not exist) is not supposed to be back until 2080 (or so) according to the guy who made it up.

It is easy to tell meteorites from moraine left by retreating glaciers. Has very little do do with burn marks.

Any meteorite that reaches Earth's surface was, technically, a small asteroid before hitting our atmosphere. There are tens (almost hundreds) every year.

Earth's orbit is presently changing by 400 km per year; however, over long periods, it is relatively stable (cycles of receding and approaching over small distances). The Asteroid belt is over 100,000,000 km away. Even if Earth were to move away at 400 km per year (which it will not do for very long), it would still take more than 250,000 years to get there.

However, over the long run, the real rate of Earth's recession (because the Sun loses mass as it shines) is measured in metres per million years. The Earth will not be one tenth of the way there by the time the Sun bloats up as a red giant (5 billion years from now).

In other words, we got "bigger worries" than drifting out to the asteroid belt.

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I am curious: how did "you" recently noticed more and more asteroids flying by?

Answer 4

The asteroid belt is too far out and we are way too far in. The last "asteroid attack" might well have been just a rogue asteroid whose orbit had been disturbed by complex gravity forces from Jupiter or oneof the larger asteroids such as Ceres or Pallas.

The Van Allen belt doesn't have the ability to override friction. It is a phenomenon caused by the magnetic fiedl of the Earth. If we were having problems in our orbital paths, astronomers all over the world would be posting things on the Internet.

The only concert I have for 2012 is that I'm still employed by then so I can retire a couple of years later without having to take a burger joint job.

By the way, what happened to the dinosaurs wasn't 13,000 years ago. I believe the last dinosaur extinction was 65 MILLION years ago. There was another somewhere (somewhen?) in then 320 MILLION years ago time frame.

Answer 5

There is no chance that the Earth will leave its orbit and wander into the asteroid belt. Nor is their any chance that the asteroid belt will come to us.

What you are seeing and hearing about are not asteroids in the asteroid belt. Not all asteroids are there! There are many others in other orbits, and some of those come fairly close to Earth.

Don't worry too much, though. Astronomers are constantly surveying the sky looking for undiscovered asteroids and any asteroid that poses a threat to Earth will likely be spotted years before it gets close to us.

Answer 6

No.

The asteroid belt is a couple of times further out from the sun than we are.

You're simply noticing them more, that is all. Partly because you may be looking more, or maybe because we're entering the trail of a comet or something. Meteor showers happen a lot.

We are WELL away from the asteroid belt.

Answer 7

yup

Answer 8

no..