Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Nightfall is Coming this Month!

Heh. You thought the writers of LnC just made Nightfall up. Here's the real deal.
Go to Nightfall in February

Artemis

And in a completely unrelated and truly mind-boggling coincidence (as far as anyone can tell) Russia got hit by a meteor today, the same day the asteroid will be passing, with enough of a shock wave to break windows and hurt several hundred people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21475858

Coming from the opposite direction in space, so it's almost certainly not connected. Some amazing video, including imagery from a weather satellite that was overhead, here:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/02142336-breaking-meteor-fall-causes.html

It's the sort of coincidence that makes me think there's more calculations that need to be made before saying that. I mean how long did we know the track of the current asteroid? Are there others that we know tracks of? Perhaps there's some sort of path (like a current of sorts) that's causing a series of them to go the same way.

I know, I know, a completely amateur speculation but one I'd say a coincidence like this merits.

For anyone writing a Nightfall story, I recommend listening into Bill Nye's commentary on what they suggest to do if such an asteroid is headed our way. (about 1 hour into that second video link that Marcus provided ).

I got totally sucked into this video. Thank you for providing the link, Marcus. This is a great resource.

I know many of you are always asking how come nobody knew about Nightfall until 4 days before it was estimated to strike Earth, they discuss that most asteroids out there, 99% *aren't* known about. 2012da14 was only discovered a year ago. Now, it was much smaller (45m) to what the fictitious Nightfall asteroid which was 13 miles across, which is more likely to be noticed by astronomers, IMO. There's another asteroid doing a fly-by in 2029, which is larger than 2012da14 (I don't remember how large they said, but I think 3 miles?).

Anyway, the Planetary Society looks like it would be a great resource for anyone writing a Nightfall story.

EDIT: They've edited the show to delete the waiting for the show to start, so you can start watching at the beginning or about 15-20 minutes in, where they talk about options in changing the trajectory of the asteroid (and why colliding with it, ala Superman, is a bad idea.)

The simple answer is that it's too soon to tell, but most evidence so far suggests that it's a coincidence. "Small" strikes like this are relatively common; most go completely unnoticed because they're in uninhabited areas, over the oceans, burn up at very high altitude and do no damage, etc. The unlikely part was that there was a big one over an inhabited area on this day of all days, with the icing on the cake being the extent to which it was documented - and that's largely because Russian insurance companies apparently give drivers discounts if they have a car-cam fitted!

Hi Virginia:
Yes, I'm a member of the Planetary Society and used their information for my story "Nighttime in the Daytime". The picture of the asteroid I have in the story is the same one they used on TV today to illustrate the trajectory of the asteroid.
The NEO grants have proved their worth.
I watched the flyby on NASA TV today.

Artemis

To tie this back to Nightfall research ...

- 2012da14 = about 45M in size (aka, described as City / region killer if it had hit)

- Meteorite which hit Russia = approx. 15M

- theorized dinosaur killing meteorite ( Chicxulub , Yucatan) = 6.2 miles / 10KM in size (threw dust into the air, choking animals / dinosaurs, blocking the sun, caused acid rain to kill vegetation which then killed herbivores and then carnivores)

- Nightfall Asteroid = 17 miles / 27.2KM in size (Almost 3 times as large as Chicxulub)

- Nightfall fragment headed towards Earth after Superman first hit it = 3 miles / 4.8KM (roughly 1/2 the size of the Chicxulub)

I'm just curious about things I hadn't before considered while working on Nightfall stories, thinking about what they said about cities being flattened by the shockwave (had 2012da14 hit), and the tidal waves which could have occurred had it landed in an ocean... would Lex Luthor, et al, really been able to survive such an impact in his bunker ark? Would the water from a tidal wave been able to flood it? Wouldn't a direct impact (even though that was never implied) decimated his bunker along with the rest of Metropolis?

Ways the men from the Planetary Society (per the links Marcus provided) suggested as ways to destroy asteroids heading on a collision path with Earth:

- Zapping it with lasers to either speed it up or slow it down.

- Zapping it with lasers to heat it up (melt off some of its water content) thereby changing its mass and speed.

- Sending a HUGE spaceship to do a flyby whose mass was large enough that its gravitational pull would change the speed or trajectory of the asteroid.

- Sending up a nuclear bomb (although they didn't like this idea) to explode near the asteroid (not impact with it) to change its course or speed.

- Landing a ship on the asteroid (ala the movie "Armageddon") they said was next to impossible because of the spinning or tumbling nature of asteroids. It was easier to change its course or speed then try land on it. (This was mentioned in reference to mining asteroids for their resources.)

- Blowing it up (ala Superman in ASU) was considered NOT an option because then instead of one meteor, you've have lots.