It's not "lack of evidence", but "evidence of absence". "Lack of evidence" is not scientifically accepted and is a fallacy!!

Elenin = Lulin??! It rhymes, then is the apocalypse. OMG

Comet Elenin (ELEven-NINe) is Nibiru? ELENIN=911

Here, take these straws, looks like you need to clutch at something…

Orbital Details
Eccentricity: 1.0005
Perihelion: 0.4813 AU (72,001,517.4 km)
Inclination: 1.8395 deg

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi

So, I'll ask this again (for the nth time), do you ever actually read the sources you forward to us?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache:CzpByqAoZqAJ:http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/112431829.html+%22Comet+Elenin%22+%22sky+and+telescope%22&ct=clnk

At the last moment, when it was only 400,000 miles, or seven hours, away from impact, its trajectory carried it away from our world. (20)

This amuses me. Rather like sitting in your car at a railroad crossing and having the train's trajectory carrying it away from you at the last moment.

Ah, that's Robert Bast's page.

The problem with that page is that it vastly overstates the danger. To be certain, an impact from a large body is the most likely danger we face from space, but Bast selectively cites sources in order to build up the impression of danger. His information is also a bit dated. The most recent citation that I saw scanning over that page was from 1997. A lot of progress has been made in the last 14 years. NEOs (Near Earth Objects) are now actively searched for by a department within NASA. In fact one of the people in our 'Guest Views' section, Don Yeomans is a senior scientist with that division of the JPL.

Our ability to detect these objects is much better than it was 14 years ago, and we are finding them… which is why we know about Apophis, and the 2029 and 2036 close approaches.

By the way the distances cited (280,000 miles, and 400,000 miles) are not as close as they sound. The closer of the two is just beyond the average distance to the moon! We know now that there are a lot of rocks out there that get close to us. Many of them are in synchronous orbits with the earth around the sun… they are influenced by our gravity and are in their own stable orbits.

We now know where most of the big, dangerous ones are. NASA/JPL tracks objects down to a meter or so across… and a meter sized object has very little chance of making it down through the atmosphere. Most meteoroids are 'stony', and fragile. They tend to break up, or even explode at high altitudes.

So… is there a danger? Yes. The odds are minuscule in any given lifetime. However we expect one large impactor about every 100 million years.¹

Also, most of the earth is unpopulated. So even if a large object were to impact, and create local devastation, it is unlikely that it would kill or injure anybody.

I can't estimate the odds… my math isn't that good. Astronomer Allen Harris estimated the overall lifetime risk of dying from an impact at 1:700,000.

On the other hand, if you live in the U.S., the odds of you dying from heart disease are 1:5, cancer 1:7, stroke 1:23, accidental injury 1:36, motor vehicle accident 1:100, suicide 1:121, fall 1:246, shot 1:325, Fire or Smoke 1:1,116, Natural Forces (heat, cold, storms, quakes, etc.) 1:3,357, Electrocution 1:5,000, Drowning 1:8,942, Air Travel Accident 1:20,000, Legal Execution 1:58,618 Snake, Bee or other Venomous Bite or Sting 1:100,000, Dog Attack 1:147,717.

I don't worry about asteroids, I worry about the food I eat, and the driver on the cell phone next to me on the freeway.

A single impact by a rock the size of the Millennium Dome could devastate the surface of the globe with an explosive release of energy five times more powerful than the entire world's nuclear arsenal. On 19 May 1996, just such an object came within 280,000 miles of Earth: six hours from collision.

Humankind could have been eradicated.

The asteroid (named JA1) sailed into our system - the largest object to approach Earth, other than the moon, since records began in 1833 - and was only four days away before two astronomers (Tim Spahr and Carl Hergenrother) in Tuscon, Arizona, detected it and alerted the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). No one was prepared. Nothing could be done to prevent its approach. Yet no one was told: no public warning was given. The world's powers watched the asteroid approach, impotent and unable to prevent the end of human civilisation. At the last moment, when it was only 400,000 miles, or seven hours, away from impact, its trajectory carried it away from our world. (20)

A few months later physicist Edward Teller wrote to the British Prime Minister, warning him of the serious threat posed by asteroids and comets - Teller, as a key player in the development of the hydrogen bomb, knew all about how fragile human existence is. (21)

The same year the US Department of Defense created a report that said:

Due to a lack of awareness and emphasis, the world is not socially, economically or politically prepared to deal with the vulnerability of …ECO (Earth Crossing Object) impacts and their potential consequences.

…These authors contend that the stakes are simply too high not to pursue direct and viable solutions to the ECO problem. Indeed, the survival of humanity is at stake. (22)

One of the brightest comets ever seen was Halle-Bopp. With a nucleus estimated at 40kms it is certainly large enough to wipe out all of humankind. It is rather discomforting to learn that we only noticed it in 1995, and if it happened to have been aimed straight at us, would have struck in 1997. Two years would not be enough time to plan/build/launch a defense.

While asteroids mostly follow the same plane of orbit as the planets, quite a narrow band of sky that is under regular observation – comets can come from anywhere, they can sneak up on us. Consequently comets tend to be discovered by amateur astronomers, while NASA lacks the funds (and perhaps willingness) to carry out full-sky observations.

It is not for me to speculate on our future ability to change the path of an asteroid or comet, should one have our planet in its sights. But based on what is currently known, it seems unlikely that we will be prepared to take on such an object if it was destined to crash into us in 2012. However, you never know what NASA might have been putting together in secret.

Therefore my presumption is this, we cannot thwart a comet or asteroid, and if one strikes us in 2012 there will be significant loss of life, depending on the size and location of impact. The bigger it is, the more likely we are to see it coming, yet the greater the odds of it wiping out all of humanity.) so if they never saw it coming then does that mean that i cant trust NASA? that it might appear right before we are able to prepare? please help im so confused!

Question

I've just found out about something called WR 104, which is worrying me, can you explain this and help me out?
Don’t worry about WR 104; I will explain why in a moment. Your question is like others I receive, often several per day, that express a kind of cosmophobia — a fear of the cosmos. News stories about astronomical events are triggering widespread worry: fear of asteroid impacts, fear of solar storms, fear of black holes, fear of the dark rift, fear of something called the photon belt (which does not exist), fear of planetary alignments (mostly imaginary), fear of reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, fear of the dwarf planet Eris, and of course fear of aliens and of the imaginary planet Nibiru. This fear is created or at least abetted by irresponsible Internet sites, some set up by the sort of people Neil DeGrasse Tyson called “those who did not do well in science classes”. Such rumors are also frequently found on catastrophist and conspiracy theory websites. Part of the problem lies also with the scientists, who sometimes hype their results seeking more media coverage, and who often fail to speak up to calm such irrational fears. I am especially concerned by the way these fears of the cosmos influence children, who lack the sophistication to distinguish exaggerations and falsehoods from real science. How sad it is to grow up fearing science rather than appreciating the wonders that science is constantly discovering. Returning to WR 104, this is what astronomers call a Wolf-Rayet star, which means a massive star probably in a pre-supernova state (see the Wikipedia articles on WR 104 and supernovas for details). It is 8000 light years away, about a third of the distance to the galactic center. No one knows when it will explode, but probably within the next million years. It is possible that when this happens there will be a noticeable burst of gamma rays arriving at the Earth and absorbed in Earth’s atmosphere. For perspective, there is about one supernova in our Galaxy every 100-200 years. I see no reason to be worried about WR 104, certainly not worried the way are about the real and immediate threat of global warming, which is happening all around us today.

David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
August 10, 2009

Question

I'm sorry if you received a lot of questions concerning 2012, but I must ask….Is there really a reason to be concerned about the safety of the earth in 2012 when the earth passes through the dark rift? as part of the galactic alignment? I am mostly interested in what 'the dark rift' is rather than whether the sun will centre the galaxy.
You are asking about one aspect of the 2012 hoax that I have not discussed, because I didn't think anyone would take it seriously. The “dark rift” is just a popular name for the broad and diffuse dust clouds in the inner arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which block our view of the galactic center. The entire "galactic alignment" scare is pretty crazy. Late in December the Sun is always approximately in the direction of the center of the Galaxy as seen from the Earth, but so what? It happens every year, and the years around 2012 are no different. There are no special forces from the galactic plane or the galactic center. The only important force that acts on the Earth is gravitation, and that is dominated by the Sun and Moon. The planets have no measurable effect, and that is why astronomers don't care about so-called planetary alignments either. But the con-men and snake-oil salesmen who are trying to scare you have decided to use these meaningless phrases about "alignments" and the "dark rift" and "photon belt" precisely because they are not understood by the public. It is too bad, but there is no law against lying on the Internet or anywhere else except in a court of law. As far as the safety of the Earth is concerned, the important threats are from global warming and loss of biological diversity, and perhaps someday from collision with an asteroid or comet, not the pseudoscientific claims about 2012.

David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
April 7, 2009

Note the article and what it says about the solar system passing through an interstellar dust cloud.

http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/1469/snowball-earth-scenario

Perhaps some of you know the best resources to address this part of the question - not just distance, but speed of travel, and make it more intuitively understandable to ordinary folks experienced only in Earth-scale speeds and distances (tiny in the scheme of the universe, or even of the inner planets).