REAL TO REEL
No, this is not a warning to take cover in advance of an impending asteroid impact, nor is it confusion about the nature of comet 67Pโthis is a tale about an asteroid and a duck. But not any old duck, rather one particular auld Pekin duck: the absurdly wealthy, characteristically cranky, adventure capitalist Scrooge McDuck, …
Like the captain of the Rocinante, I never skip my morning coffeeโand The Expanse title sequence is like a shot of espresso. It might seem as though the protocol for dealing with the one minute interruption and seemingly unintelligible theme song is to hit Skip Intro, but there's something you should knowโฆ The content updates …
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"The whole world will weep with gratitude when the big day comes because Mr Happer has got his comet!" What Mr Happer really wants is to find a comet. If he does, he'll call it a Happer comet or Happer's Comet orโฆComet Happer. Sadly, Happer never gets his comet but he does eventually get an …
The opening ceremony of Tokyo 2020 made a massive impact when seemingly out of nowhere a rogue planet (actually, our own) appeared in the sky over the Olympic stadium. A shimmering ring gate made of hundreds of drones had morphed into a slowly rotating Earth, like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. In tribute …
From titanium, helium-3 and sapphire, to pergium, tylium and opus, whether nudging an asteroid too close to Earth, cloning lunar miners to save costs, or mining the outer reaches of the Solar System, here are some movies and TV shows about mining in space. This list is presented in no particular order and the results …
NASA and Arizona State University, along with other partners, are working on a project to send a spacecraft to investigate the unique asteroid 16 Psyche, an assumed metal-rich body about the size of Switzerland orbiting in the asteroid belt at an average distance of 2.9 AU from the Sun. What is unique about asteroid Psyche …
A useful graphic showing the largest objects in the asteroid belt โ the first 22 objects in decreasing size from dwarf planet 1 Ceres to 7 Iris ...
Inspired by five words, or is it six, in the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon, a movie about an asteroid the size of Texas on course to impact Earth in eighteen days and the team of deep core drillers sent to break it up, I wondered whether there were any quantifiable clues to support the statement that …
Compiling a list of every asteroid and comet disaster movie ever made is no easy feat. First, you need to identify potential candidates, then you have to watch them all, which can be a somewhat tougher job than finding them. Much like asteroids and comets themselves, there's a whole spectrum of content in these dramas, …
Continue reading "Every Asteroid and Comet Disaster Movie Ever Made"
Apparently, if you smell a fresh meteorite it smells like sulphur, according to reports about the Tagish Lake meteorite and the aroma that filled the air during its fall in 2000. And the Aguas Zarcas meteorite that fell in Costa Rica in 2019 has been said to smell of compost, vanilla and Brussels sprouts, depending …
Graphics showing all of the asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft...
From active asteroids to dormant comets, rubble piles to remnant cores, main belt comets and manx comets to ambiguous interstellar objects, this article provides a brief overview of the smaller objects in our planetary zooโthe main differences and similarities between asteroids and comets. But if it's meteors you're looking for, read Meteoroids, Meteors and Meteorites. …
It's the end of the year and one particular tabloid newspaper is again warning us that it could soon be the end of the world โ yes, asteroid 2019 AE3 is in our vicinity and the apocalypse is coming. In keeping with the tabloid drama, here's a link to IMPACT! โ a compendium of all …
Continue reading "Earth-Threatening Asteroids and Comets in the Movies"
So there's another apocalyptic asteroid warning in the tabloid news headlines. The lead scaremongerer appears to be the Daily Express, who started out playfully alerting us to asteroids that will skim by Earth in the coming days. But it didn't take long for a war of the digital world to start warning of swarms of …
I once read a quote in a conference abstract that stated the paper had been written to serve as โa historical guide to the asteroid literature for the perplexedโ. That quote sums up my desire for writing a piece on the history of asteroid classification and the schemes currently in use (as at 2019). [Note: …
More than 100 years have passed since the first film was shown in movie theatres that depicted a rock from space wreaking havoc on Earthโalthough in that case it was a comet rather than an asteroid making an impact. That movie, a silent black and white film called The End of the World, released in …
Continue reading "Making an Impact: Lights, Camera, Asteroid!"
Many people will remember the day in 2013 when one asteroid stole the limelight from another. On 15 February 2013, all eyes of astronomers were on the close approach of a 30 metre-sized Apollo asteroid 367943 Duende (then known as 2012 DA14). The asteroid was not expected to be visible to the naked eye. Nor …
Continue reading "Real and Simulated Asteroid and Comet Impacts"
Itโs a truth universally acknowledged that a moviemaker with a large rock heading for Earth must ignore the laws of physics and make things behave the way moviegoers want, otherwise no-one will watch it. And so asteroids and comets are called meteors, and meteoroids and meteors are called meteorites, and meteorites are called...wellโฆmeteorites, actually. The …
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