I occasionally visit the woo-woo site www.survive2012.com and read what news posts are there; (Webmaster Robert Bast has recently been discussed on this forum). The following caught my eye. A poster, who themself could be a flake, claims an asteroid between 2011-2013. (No links provided, of course!) Has anyone seen anything to this effect (and I read space.com daily myself):
SNIPPET: " Surprisingly NASA is more recently working on a bit of a conundrum surrounding a visitor heading toward our planet and expected to arrive on a collision course some time between the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2013. Hmmmm, perhaps the North American winter of 2012?????"
(END SNIPPET). The posting was referring to asteroids, not PX. Now I know the 2012 crowd desperately wants a 2012 disaster, but in reality has anyone here caught wind of what this writer is speaking of, or is this more hype?

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"One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways." -Karl A. Menninger

I'd say, just "expected to arrive on a collision course some time between the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2013" gives away the whole story as utter crap.
If we would know that something is on a collison course, we would also know at which exact time the collision would happen.

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Since I'm about to go to bed my thinking is likely a little suspect --

But it strikes me that the uncertainty of orbit expressed by "somewhere between 2011 and 2013" is many magnitudes greater then the uncertainty of hitting the rather small target of Earth. Basically, until they nail that crossing down to a window that's measured in minutes I wouldn't worry much about the chances of it impacting.

That's kind of what I started thinking. Whenever the press has discovered a future asteroid threat it is pretty much nailed down to a specific date, then has always been ruled out anyway. A two-year span just doesn't make sense. Thanks for your comments!

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"One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways." -Karl A. Menninger

Well just to make all the woo²s happy, Toutatis will be back in 2012. I'm not sure how close it'll get that year, not as close as this year I would think. Of course it'll be passing us again in 2008, 2016, 2020, 2024... too, but hey....

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I also suspect that in any given year there are at least several Near-Earth objects that get within observational range of Earth (I'm talking within millions of miles). There might have been one discovered recently that visits the neighborhood in 2012, though I don't recall anything. I think these folks can't distinguish between an object that will pass at 10 LDs (lunar distances) and a collision :roll: .

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)