!! ASTEROID, to hit EARTH TONIGHT !!

Armageddon?

Was my life that short?

Behold! It is going to happen tonight.

Let it be the end.

A meteoroid dubbed 2008 TC3 around the size of a Smart Car is predicted to burn up in Earth's atmosphere over Sudan tonight i.e., on 7th October 2008 at 0246 GMT, marking the first time scientists have made such a forecast.

2008 TC3 was discovered on Oct. 6th by astronomers using the Mt. Lemmon telescope in Arizona as part of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey for near-Earth objects.

The fact that scientist are able to make this prediction proves the system installed by westerners is working, These sized objects are not the ones we should be most concerned about – there are tens of thousands of much larger objects that could cause real damage on the ground that are still yet to be found.

It will be travelling from west to east, and may be visible from a few hundred kilometers away. There's no danger from an object this size, but the burn-up could be spectacular for those who witness it. Objects this size are what cause the nighttime streaks that many people think of as shooting stars. Measuring only a few meters across, the space rock poses no threat to people or structures on the ground, but it should create a spectacular fireball, releasing about a kiloton of TNT in energy as it disintegrates and explodes in the atmosphere, the equivalent of a low-energy nuclear bomb.

It will hit the atmosphere at an angle of 20°, so it will make a long trail in the atmosphere. [The rock] might end up quite far – above the Red Sea or Saudi Arabia – or it might explode and disappear sooner. If it disintegrates all at once, it would produce a bright flash of light and a loud sonic boom.

Its brightness suggests it is no more than about 5 meters across – so small it will likely be destroyed in the atmosphere. The meteoroid that created Meteor Crater in Arizona was probably 150 feet across. The above pasted images are of the same crater.

ARIZONA IMPACT CRATER

The impact produced a massive explosion equivalent to at least 2.5 megatons of TNT – equivalent to a large thermonuclear explosion and about 150 times the yield of the atomic bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The explosion dug out 175 million tons of rock. The shock of impact propagated as a hemispherical shock wave that blasted the rock down and outward from the point of impact, forming the crater. Much more impact energy, equivalent to an estimated 6.5 megatons, was released into the atmosphere and generated a devastating above-ground shockwave.

For a meteorite of its size, the impact melted surprisingly little rock, though it produced high enough temperatures and pressures to transform carbon minerals into diamonds and lonsdaleite, a form of diamond found near the crater in fragments of Arizona's Canyon Diablo meteorite. Limestone blocks as massive as 30 tons were tossed outside the crater's rim, and debris from the impact has been found over an area of 100 square miles (260 km²). The shock of the impact would have produced a localized earthquake of magnitude 5.5 or higher.

The blast and thermal energy released by the impact would certainly have been lethal to living creatures within a wide area. All life within a radius of three to four kilometers (1.9-2.5 miles) would have been killed immediately. The impact produced a fireball hot enough to cause severe flash burns at a range of up to 10 km (7 miles). A shock wave moving out at 2,000 km/h (1,200 mph) leveled everything within a radius of 14-22 km (8.5-13.5 miles), dissipating to hurricane-force winds that persisted to a radius of 40 km (25 miles).

Despite this destruction, this impact did not throw up enough dust to seriously affect the Earth's climate. The area was probably recolonized by the local flora and fauna within a century. This did not greatly affect the crater itself; its preservation was aided by the local climate's shift to its present-day arid conditions.