Asteroid

What if millions of years ago an inteligent alien life form discovered Earth, but found it full of giant meat eating reptiles. Could these little green men deliberately have sent an asteroid to Earth to wipe out the giant reptilian menace, while at the same time save other harmless species in a "noah Ark" like space craft?
This is just a theory, and many things are posible, especialy in the theory of inteligent alien life forms.

Why is it that the seemingly most intelligent individuals that answer some questions are the most arrogant?
First they always want to correct the Asker’s question in some way; e.g. telling you your question is a hypothesis and not a theory.
SO WHAT.
The question wasn’t ‘is this a theory or hypothesis?’
Some will call you thinks like, “idiot” then tell you things like, “Why would anyone capable of building and piloting, let alone navigating, an intersteller spaceship be worried about a few dumbarse lizards?”.
Hmmm. Let’s see what common sense says.
How about this?
Being intelligent and capable of interstellar travel doesn’t make on indestructible.

Then some give you some kind of arrogant answer that THEY think is intelligent; e.g., “intelligent life would have had to exist at least 4.4 light years away since…” blah blah blah.
What makes man think that HE is the intelligent life that determines who and what can exist and where?
Man has yet to find all the LIFE on this planet, let alone ‘INTELLIGENT life’.
Man hasn’t been able to go to the bottom of the ocean to see what’s down there; yet some individuals want to tell YOU where other intelligent life would have to exist if it exists; how long it would take man with his WEAK TECHNOLOGy to get there..
Heck dude, your dinosaurs may have gone to the bottom of the ocean to be able to escape the doom of an asteroid. Or maybe the aliens were much like us physically and couldn’t withstand the pressure of the deepest parts of the ocean..
They still haven’t proven or disproved the Loch Ness creature.

Man hasn’t created anything…not even himself and without believing that God Created and made EVERY THING (sic) that is in existence, man can’t even tell you OUR origin.

Alien life can exist anywhere in this universe that ITS form of life was made to exist in.
For all we know, there could be creatures made of fire that live in what we call our Sun or other balls of fire in the universe.
We don’t even know every life form that is on THIS planet and yet some have the audacity to want to tell others where life can or cannot exist.

What makes some think THEY know what and where intelligent life exists other than ours…and WE are NOT THAT INTELLIGENT; hence THEIR answer(s).

When you read their answer under the scrutiny of COMMON SENSE, you realize that they are the ones that along with their arrogance show their lack of intelligence.
When dealing with POSSIBILITIES, ANYTHING that your mind can conceive IS possible.
The thought came from somewhere.

i’ve seen a million things on how they died, but i dont understand how everything else lived. maybe not everything lived, but how did enought survive to have so many different species? i understand with plants that the seeds could jsut stay in the ground and grow at the right time, but with animals i am confused.

Many, many species became extinct from the impact and its after-effects (take a look at the web site). However, not everything did. For example, dinosaurs were mostly cold blooded. The very small mammals present were not, and may have been able to survive because of this (they produced their own heat and didn’t rely on the sun). For specific discussions, take a look at the third web site.

Why didn’t these objects form into a planet?

The asteroid belt is a ring of rocky debris between Jupiter and Mars, thought to have been created when Jupiter’s mass made the area too unstable for planet formation. The debris is not evenly distributed, and the belt has zones where there are far fewer asteroids than expected. Some of those gaps, called Kirkwood gaps, are in zones where Jupiter or Saturn’s gravitational influence destabilises the asteroids so much that they are ejected from the belt, but many are in areas that are currently stable. Minton and University of Arizona colleague Renu Malhotra suspected that the answer lay in the migration of the giant planets, which are thought to have formed elsewhere in the Solar System and moved to their present location around four billion years ago. Jupiter is thought to have formed slightly further away from the Sun than it is today, and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were once closer. The planets were subsequently dragged into their present positions by the gravity of large objects ejected from the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy debris lying beyond the planets. Once the Kuiper belt was depleted of large objects, the planets settled into their current orbits.
Most asteroids (3 out of 4) are made of carbon-based rock. The rest are made of the metals iron and nickel. About half of these are pure iron and nickel; the rest are mixed with silica compounds. Each of the larger metal asteroids contains more iron than has been mined in the entire history of human kind. Scientists are very interested in what asteroids are made of because it can help them learn how the solar system was formed. Several spacecraft have visited asteroids to learn more about them. Most asteroids are found in the asteroid belt, but not all. Some asteroids orbit closer to the Sun. Asteroids that closely approach Earth are called Near-Earth Asteroids. Sometimes they strike the Earth, burning in the atmosphere as a meteor. If they are large enough, they might actually hit the surface and become meteorites.

Does it give it a Higher Chance of Hitting us "Planet Earth", Or even a Definite Chance of it hitting us, Will it Hit? Or not. Give me your opinion, If it is, When i have my Children im living underground! =3!

If it goes through the keyhole in 2029 then the probability of a collision in 2036 will be pretty close to 1, i.e. near certain, that’s what defines the keyhole in the first place.

Fortunately the keyhole is over 2 standard deviations from the nominal trajectory at present, which is why the chance of collision is put at a rather remote 1 in 45,000.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html

It dosnt seem like we can, if you try to nuke it or missle it and its enormous and thats it what do we do?

Today, hundreds of astronomers around the world scour the night skies. The majority of their work is coordinated by NASA, which has committed to finding and identifying 90% of all near-Earth objects larger than one kilometer in diameter by the year 2010.
Today, most astronomers use advanced electronic imaging systems and sophisticated computers. These systems are ten times more sensitive than photographic film, and far more efficient than human labor.
"The computer and the camera work by themselves in Maui, Hawaii," says Dr. Pravdo. "They have baby-sitters, but the scientists are here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory." Each night, the computers track moving objects across the sky and take about 1,000 separate images. This includes three or four images of each object taken at different times, which allows the astronomers to begin charting the object’s orbit. When new objects are discovered, the details are passed on to the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for confirmation and registration.

"The possibility that the Earth will be struck by a large asteroid or comet is not insignificant," says Dr. Marsden. "It’s a low frequency event, but the destruction it could cause is quite tremendous. It’s a serious question, given that 65 million years ago the dinosaurs and all the other life forms were extinguished by a large impact. It’s not likely to happen soon, but you just don’t know."

"We need to do the watching, so we can be aware if something is headed our way," says Dr. Marsden. "If we do discover something that will hit us, the more warning one has, the more possibility we have to actually do something about it. It might be possible to send a weapon out into space to deflect or blow up the object. As a responsible society, this is something we should bear in mind."

NASA says they can deflect it if it gets too close, what do you think?
Popular Mechanics and the NEWS people….guess if you don’t read you won’t know about it! Please only real answers from people who know whats goin on. Thanks!

99942 Apophis is the asteroid you mean and April 13 2029 is the date, I take it?

Wikipedia reports:

(99942) Apophis (previously known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4) is a near-Earth asteroid that caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 because initial observations indicated a relatively large probability that it would strike the Earth in 2029.

(However, within 3 days of the initial concern), additional observations provided improved predictions that eliminated the possibility of an impact on Earth or the Moon in 2029.

However there remained a possibility that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a "gravitational keyhole", a precise region in space no more than about 400 meters across, that would set up a future impact on April 13, 2036.

This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August 2006.

Additional observations of the trajectory of Apophis revealed the "keyhole" would likely be missed and on August 5, 2006, Apophis was lowered to a Level 0 Torino impact hazard scale.

As of October 19, 2006 the impact probability for April 13, 2036 is estimated at 1 in 45,000. An additional impact date in 2037 has been identified, however the impact probability for that encounter is 1 in 12.3 million."

MY COMMENT

At those odds, I am not going to lose any sleep over this one.

SOME DATA ABOUT APOPHIS

Aphelion distance: 164.351 Gm (1.099 AU)
Perihelion distance: 111.633 Gm (0.746 AU)
Semi-major axis: 137.992 Gm (0.922 AU)
Orbital period: 323.587 days (0.89 years)

COMMENT
Apophis has a 323 day elliptical orbit around the sun during most of which time it is well inside earth’s orbit. Twice every 11 months it crosses earth’s orbit, once on its way out to its aphelion and once on its way back again.

But we are usually millions of miles away, eg on the far side of the sun, at the time. It is only once every 7 years or so that the two orbits are anything like in phase with one another Such that the (im)probability of an impact needs to be calculated at all.

The next nearish approach is not till 2013 and the plan is to use radar to observe and calculate its orbit up till 2070 or so when this occurs.

Its size is approx 320 metres in diameter, Any impact an asteroid of this size would make would be extremely detrimental to an area of thousands of square kilometres, but would be unlikely to have long-lasting global effects, such as the initiation of an impact winter as with the asteroid that caused the dinosaurs to die out.

Seen on the news about a month ago. Said to be six miles wide.

No, it would have been interesting, but there was never more than a four percent chance of impact, and now it looks as if it will miss. Phil Plait on his Bad astronomy web site has been following this story , look it up!