Pinaki wrote:
Frankly, to think that a satellite, so far away from the earth's crust, would appear to a naked eye seems really hard to digest. And to think that a sun's reflection on such a far away satellite is watchable by naked eye sounds silly to me. So, as far as I am concerned, it is a silly argument(shining objects seen by naked eye are satellites) in favor of pro-satellite view. I would think that those shining objects seen by the naked eye must be either much bigger or much closer than what the satellites are supposed to be. So, I assume them to be planes.
Dear Pinaki,
They're not planes - but quite simply Near-Earth asteroids. I don't think anyone would question the existence of Near-Earth asteroids.
Even Wickedpedia knows about the existence of Near-Earth asteroids :
NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_asteroids (scroll 1/3 down the page)
These are objects of 50 meters or more in diameter in a near-Earth orbit without the tail or coma of a comet. As of May 2012,
8,880 near-Earth asteroids are known, ranging in size from 1 meter up to ~32 kilometers (1036 Ganymed). The number of near-Earth asteroids over
one kilometer in diameter is estimated to be about 981. The composition of near-Earth asteroids is comparable to that of asteroids from the asteroid belt, reflecting a variety of asteroid spectral types.
But of course, Wickedpedia feels the need to show us this gif - with this ridiculous caption:
Wiki Caption: "Flyby of asteroid 2004 FH.
The other object that flashes by is an artificial satellite."
Hogwash. No way is that fly-by flash (with tail !!!) an "artificial (i.e. man-made) satellite"! If anything (and providing the above clip is legit) it is what we colloquially call a 'falling star' - a.k.a. a
meteor, burning up as it enters Earth's atmosphere. Most likely, the clown who wrote that caption has an agenda to uphold the myth of man-made satellites.
Instead, the orbiting object in the middle of the above gif looks exactly like the countless sightings I remember from my childhood, while gazing at the Norwegian skies on summer nights - back in the 70's. I (and my brothers and cousins) would see such moving dots quite reliably - every 10/15 minutes or so! - following them with our eyes across the full width of the amazing Norwegian star-crowded firmament ( before falling asleep on my grandfather's lawn). In fact, we would also observe a great deal of meteors - briefly flashing by as seen in the above gif - so I am
not saying the above clip is necessarily doctored. You'd have to be quite lucky to capture such a shot with a camera / telescope - but it is certainly not impossible to do so.
Unsurprisingly, Wickedpedia 'spices up' that article with lots of fear-mongering (NASA-inspired) rubbish - what with the potential catastrophic dangers of big asteroids colliding with Earth with the force of ten zillion Hiroshima bombs and so forth...
"On March 23, 1989 the 300-meter (1,000-foot) diameter Apollo asteroid 4581 Asclepius (1989 FC) missed the Earth by 700,000 kilometers (430,000 mi) passing through the exact position where the Earth was only 6 hours before. If the asteroid had impacted it would have created the largest explosion in recorded history, twelve times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever exploded by man."
So, yes Pinaki: I fully concur with you that
the idea of the dots we see flying across the night skies being man-made satellites (most of them supposedly as big as washing machines - if not smaller) which reflect sunlight - is utterly ludicrous. Instead, it makes perfect sense that these would simply be one of our 8880 Near Earth asteroids flying by. Does it not?
To be sure, some of them occasionally fly by as close as this :
Asteroid 2005 YU55 to Approach Earth on November 8, 2011
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news171.html
They are not planes. And they are not man-made satellites. Only
Near Earth asteroids.
