Near Miss and Cosmic Spectacles: Asteroids, Comets, and Space Junk in Earth's Orbit

This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and twenty six, for broadcast on the twenty seventh of October twenty twenty five. Coming up on Spacetime, Planet Earth experiences an asteroidy miss and we didn't even know about it until it was too late, a pair of green comets lighting up the night skies, and Chinese space junk slams into Western Australia. All that and more coming up on space Time. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. You want to know what keeps astronomers up late at nights other than observing time. Of course, its scenario is like the one which happened earlier this month, when an undetected asteroid was suddenly seen swooping past Earth just four hundred two twenty eight kilomet is above the ground, and to put that in perspective, that's about the same altitude as the orbit of the International Space Station. The asteroid, now known as twenty twenty five TF, was up to three meters in size, and it's sped across the sky. It's above Antarctica. Even scarier. Astronomers only found out about it after it had already met its closest approach. Astronomers from the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona were the first to detect the asteroid, some six hours after it swept by. Additional observations were then undertaken by the Catalina Sky Survey and the European Space Agency's Punetary Defense Office using the Las Cambudos telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory near Kunabara Brandt in far western New South Wales. Twenty twenty five TF marks the second closest approach of any known asteroid, behind only twenty twenty VT four, a slightly larger meteor estimated to have been up to ten meters in size. It passed above the Pacific Ocean back in November twenty twenty at an altitude of three hundred and eighty six kilometers. Any space rock flying lower than that usually ends up hitting the Earth, and like twenty twenty five TF, twenty twenty VT four was only detected after its closest approach in that event, some fifteen hours later. And you've got to wonder there are asteroids out there that we don't see until it's too late. How many near misses are out there that we never see? This space time still to come to bright green comets lighting up our night skies, and a smoldering chunk of Chinese space junk slams into the Western Australia out back. All that and more still to come on space time. Over the past month, sky watchers have been enjoying the rare spectacle of two bright green comets streaking across the night skies. Both are thought of have originated in the Oort Cloud, a region of comets I see debris and frozen worlds gravitationally bound to the Sun at and beyond the very limit of our Solar System. Comets are frozen leftovers from the Solar System's formation four point six billion years ago. They heat up as they approach the Sun, degasing volatiles into space, which form a coma around the comet's nucleus and generate their characteristic streaming tails. The comets look green because of the gases streaming off their surfaces. The appearance of both these comets go insides with the annual Rinded meteor shower, which is visible from October two through until November seventh. Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through debris trails left behind by comets as they orbit around the Sun. As a meteor from this debris field enters ears atmosphere at high speed, friction generated as they fly through the air causes them to heat up dramatically, resulting in a characteristic bright streak of light, often erroneously referred to as a shooting star. The orionids are generated by the dusk stream left behind by Comet Halley, which swings around the Earth once every seventy five to seventy six years and is due to make its next appearance in twenty sixty one. As for our current cometary visitors, Comet C. Twenty twenty five are to Swan was spotted in September by an amateur astronomer. It's just past the Earth and is now heading back to the outer reaches the Solar System. As Swan leaves the warming embrace of the Sun, it'll grow dimmer as the days pass. New all Comet C. Twenty twenty five A six lemon, has just made its closest approach to the Earth and will achieve perihelion, its closest orbital position of the Sun, on November fourth. It too, will then also head back to the outer reaches the Solar System and won't be back for another thirteen hundred years. Lemon was first discovered back in January by telescope scaring the night skies Finnereth objects. Doctor Robert Massey, the Deputy Executive Director of the Royal Astronomical Society, says Comet Lemon is a spectacular site at the moment, especially for Northern Hemisphere skywatchers, looking like a fairly bright, fuzzy object near the start of Terrorists before heading further round towards the southwest beneath the stars of the Summer Triangle. Common Lemon is pretty much at its best at visibility right now. It's close to the sun around the fourth November, so really this is pretty much the best time to be looking for this object. The best place to look now is in the evening sky, so you need to be looking as it gets dark obviously after the sunset, when the sun's above the rising me much too bright. As the sky darkens, the comet will first of all be moving over a matter of days past the bright star Arcturists, and then it'll be further round towards the southwest beneath the stars of the Summer triangle. You're going to need some kind of act or find a chart to help you locate it, you know. But with a peripinocia sweeping around the sky, it stammed out as a fairly bright, fuzzy object. If we're very lucky and you've got a very dark sky, it might be possible to see it with the naked eye as well, despite the fact that comets like lemon have tails and this big coma of gas around them. Actually, the new fists in the very center is probably quite small, probably only a couple of kilometers across, so hill or mountain size. It's remarkable that we see them so well. It isn't going to be like say hail Bot was for those who remember it back in the late nineteen nineties or even near wise in twenty twenty. It's going to be a little tough to see with the eye. But that said, it's a reasonably bright comet as they go. The fact that you can see easily with binoculars makes it fairly unusual, and I think it's really for that reason alone. There's something to go and enjoy. Particularly you've never seen a comment before. Let's doctor Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director of the Royal E'stenomical Society, and this is space time still to come. Smoldering chunks of Chinese space junks slam into Western Australia's outback, and later in the science report, global carbon dioxide levels hit a new record high. All that and more still to come on space time. A smoldering chunk of black and space junk has been discovered lying in the middle of a remote access mining road in the Pilber region of outback Western Australia. Mine workers found the still burning wreckage some thirty kilometers east of the town of Newman. The debris appears to be part of a composite carbon fiber pressure vessel from the fourth stage of the Chinese Geelong three rocket. The Geelong three was launched last month, deploying twelve satellite into low Earth orbit. Its upper stage was on the right trajectory at the time, a ninety seven point six degree inclined polar orbit, which would have put it directly above the impact point at toward forty local time earlier that same day. Australian Space Agency ASA is now examining the object. Beijing has long been criticized by other Nations for its inability to safely control the orbit of its spent spacecraft. Back in April twenty twenty two, parts of the Chinese third stage rocket booster crashed back to Earth near a house in the Indian village of Ldori, startling the residents who were preparing a meal at the time. Of course, Western Australia's outback is no stranger to space junk. When this is Skylab space station, its most famous contributor, crashing back to Earth and scattering debris over a wide area between Esperance and Balladonia in nineteen seventy nine, this is space time, and time that to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a Science Report, A new study is found that twenty twenty four so come to oxide levels in the world's atmosphere hit a new record high of four hundred and twenty three point nine parts per million. The findings by the World Meteorological Organization a detail in its latest annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The new record high reading represents an increase of three point five parts per million above twenty twenty three levels, and that is the largest recorded annual increase since modern measurements began in nineteen fifty seven. The likely reason for this record surge was extensive emissions from wildfires, while record warm temperatures also hampered the ability of forests and oceans to capture and store carbon. Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a a fifteen hundred year old synagogue in the Golan Heights. The ancient shul was uncovered at a dig site in the Hoodi and Nature Reserve by scientists from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the University of Haifa. During their excavations, scientists found the base of a column, a stone floor, and the southern wall of the temple with three entrance ways and different architectural elements. So far, more than one hundred and fifty items are being documented across the ruins, including a stone engraved with a Jewish candelabra called a menora, a large rectangular stone tablet with dovetail handles, and several stone benches. The archaeologists are now looking for the temple's northern wall that determine its overall size. They estimate the building could be at least seventeen meters long. The synagogue was constructed in the Basilica style, featuring a rectangular structure with two rows of columns and benches along the walls, a common layout in ancient shules in Israel. The buildings very similar to other synagogues in the area, which date mainly from the late third to the seventh and eighth centuries. So far, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of more than one hundred and thirty ancient synagogues in the Land of Israel, demonstrating a continuous Jewish presence from the Hemosean period in the second century BCE right up until the late Byzantine and the early Islamic periods of the six to eight centuries. In a shocking revelation, a national survey marking Global hand Washing Day is found that twenty eight percent of Australian men and eighteen percent of women surveyed say they didn't always wash their hands after urinating. Of even more concern, thirteen percent of men and eleven percent of women admitted not always washing their hands after evacuating their bowels. The findings are highly concerning as toilets and bathrooms are one of the favored locations for harmful bacteria and fecal matter often contains bacteria, viruses, and parasites, all of which spread the risk of diseases. The survey also found that forty three percent of men and forty nine percent of women admitted they didn't always wash their hands before handling food. Well, it seems shysters have come up with a new way to grab your money in marketing a new healing biomat, a rug which they claim offers detox, pain relief and mood boosts using the quantum effects of crystals, negative ions and infrared heat. Timendum from Australian Skeptics says a study of the matt by McGill University concluded that it was a textbook case of clever marketing dressed up in scientific jargon, with very little evidence to back up any of the claims. This is a match with a little really a little umpy pattern to it that you rely on. It's a healing thing, be kind of class. You posted two thousand US dollars and it's got all these claims about it that it's a detoxing, pain relief boost, moves infrared heat. The description I would said it looks like it was written by a rogue AI with a phosaurus and a minor head injury, which is very cruel because the description, I would say is and this is on the company's own website. Part symergy of quantum energetics from deep penetrating heat are far infrared rays, negative ion therapy for cellular activation, and the healing properties of amethysts. At the nice conglomoration of things. If they say the word quantum, you know it's garbage. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, that's the red flavor pops up straight away and say, anyone who quotes quantum probably doesn't know anything about quantum science or anything, but it sounds good. Far infrared rays. Exist, but humans shine brightest in infrared radiation. What we see in visible light, that's nothing. Humans shine in infrared radiation. So if you lie on this matt, you've got to heat it up, it's going to have infrared. Oh, I don't know. You were saying that you actually hate the mat up and the mat doesn't hate you. There's also the negative ions. Of course, who says that you know the density of negative virons. They do exist, but it's not a effectiveness about having measurable effects on you. And the course pimbers about in the eighties or something, there was a big thing about negative rome with negative iron generators and all sorts of things. So you know, we supposedly would improve the air clean the area. We had one at the radio station I was working at the time. It made the air smell like it had been raining. I don't did any good or not. It's supposedly the effect of being near a waterfall that means about being raining, et cetera. But as far as healing powers and healing all sorts of illnessis and things, no, there's no evidence of that at all anyway. And as far as crystals go, yeah, thank you by that's the next red flag that crops up here saying quantum is the first red flag. The healing property of the crystals is the next red flag. And I would suspect and what McGill seems to put forward as well as that you've just spent two thousand dollars on a bit of rubber or whatever it's made out of the biomac that you're sort of lying on will probably not do anything. They describe it. Finally, the gill as the pseudo science gift rap in scientific gibberish sold with the confidence of a man in a trench coat offering roll exes in a back alley, which is yes, I don't think they lovely, isn't it. And that's why I like McGill University. That come in with a lot of good stuff. Actually they suggest alternatively, grab yourself a little heating pad, one of the things you squeeze and it puts that he and a cup of tea and you'll say, have a lot of money. That's timendum from Australian Skeptics, and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast, pocker Casts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon, Music, bytes dot Com, SoundCloud YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Zone Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. 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