The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now

 

Image Courtesy Of Nsf–Doe Vera C. Rubin Observatory/Noirlab/Slac​/Aura

Joel Kontinen

What do we know of the universe?  Not much, but the most detailed survey of the universe starts now.  Over 11 000 new asteroids discovered and ”they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created.”

“The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is finally beginning its mammoth survey of the universe. After a year of testing and calibration,it is starting the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which is poised to become the most detailed record of the universe ever captured.

For the next decade, Rubin will collect about 10 terabytes of data every night in the form of hundreds of high-resolution images of the southern sky. Each image will cover an area about 40 times the size of the full moon, and the completed survey will include nearly the entirety of the sky that is visible from the southern hemisphere.

This treasure trove of data will serve several purposes. The first, which has already begun, is to alert researchers to anything changing in the night sky, such as the appearance of supernovae or the motion of asteroids and comets. they are expected to result in the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever created,”

Source:

 Leah Crane 2026 The most detailed survey of the universe ever conducted starts now | New Scientist 30 June 

NASA's asteroid deflection test had unexpected and puzzling outcome

 

Illustration showing NASA’s DART probe, upper right, on course to strike the asteroid Dimorphos, left, which orbits Didymos. Image courtesy of Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA/AP/Alamy

Joel Kontinen

The DART mission achieved its goal of changing one asteroid’s orbit around another, but questions remain about why the orbit continued to alter over the following month.

Space has its secrets.

After NASA smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, its orbit slowly but surely changed over the next month, and astronomers can’t explain why.

In 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) flew a nearly-600-kilogram satellite into a small asteroid called Dimorphos, which orbits a larger one called Didymos.

Before the impact, Dimorphos completed an orbit every 11 hours and 55 minutes. Observations soon after revealed that the collision had reduced the orbital period by about 30 minutes, but in the following weeks and months, the orbit shrank even further, by another 30 seconds.

Source: 

Alex Wilkins 2025 NASA's asteroid deflection test had unexpected and puzzling outcome | New Scientist 1 October 

Some asteroids are very hard to break

Image courtesy of JAXA.     

Joel Kontinen

Some asteroids are very hard to break. According to evolution, dust particles survived at least 4.2 billion years or near the age of the solar system. 

The Japanese gathered dust from the ´surface of a 500 meter or 1640 foot long Itokawa, and it would seem that they are harder to destroy than previously thought, - 

"NASA tracks the locations and orbits of roughly 28,000 asteroids", some of which might be deadly to us.   

Source:  

Turner,  Ben. 2023, Primordial asteroids are like giant space pillows and could be harder to destroy than previously thought Live Science 23 January, 

Evolutionists: A 4.6 Billion Year old protoplanet in the early solar system spawned a unique type of meteorite

 

Image courtesy of Maine Mineral and Gem Museum/Darryl Pitt, fair use doctrine.

Joel Kontinen

Evolutionists believe that a lonely meteorite that landed in the Sahara Desert in 2020 is older than  Earth. The primeval space rock is supposedly about 4.6 billion years old, and is the oldest known example of magma from space.

 

The meteorite, called Erg Chech 002 (EC 002), is likely a rare surviving chunk of a lost baby planet that was destroyed or absorbed by bigger rocky planets during our solar system's formation. 

Approximately 3,100 known meteorites originated in crust and mantle layers of rocky asteroids, but they reveal little about protoplanet diversity when our solar system was young. About 95% come from just two parent bodies, and around 75% of those originated from one source — possibly the asteroid 4 Vesta, one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, the researchers reported.

 Here’s how the evolutionists claimed it: EC 002 stood out. Radioactive versions, or isotopes, of aluminum and magnesium indicated that the meteorite's parent was an ancient body dating to 4.566 billion years ago, and EC 002's chemical composition revealed that it emerged from a partly-melted magma reservoir in the parent body's crust.

 

This is just an example of Darwinian speculation. 

Source

Weisberger Mindy. 2021. 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite belongs to Earth’s long-lost baby cousin Live Science 9 March.

Will this Mysterious Asteroid Usher In The Calamities Of Revelation?

 

Microscope image of a meteorite sample collected in Sudan shows amphibole crystals, a unique feature, highlighted in orange.

Courtesy of NASA/USRA/Lunar and Planetary Institute.

 Joel Kontinen

The last book of the Bible, the Revelation speaks of an object (probably an that asteroid) that is called Wormwood shakes the Earth in a little while.  

“The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water-- the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.”

Now, science talks about an asteroid that can hurl rocks at Earth. It has to do with the meteorite that exploded over Sudan in 2008.

"NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid — one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt."

 

"Some of these meteorites are dominated by minerals providing evidence for exposure to water at low temperatures and pressures," study co-author Vicky Hamilton, a planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in the statement. "The composition of other meteorites points to heating in the absence of water."

Now, Jupiter takes care of almost all asteroids, so this one must be arranged by God.

The paper was published Dec. 21 in the journal Nature Astronomy-

Source:

Letzter, Rafi. 2020. Mysterious asteroid the size of a dwarf planet is lurking in our solar system. Live Science 26 December

Ice on the surface of an asteroid: the astronomers’ coelacanth?

Using NASA’s infrared telescope on Mauna Kea, astronomers found surface water ice on an asteroid. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.




Joel Kontinen

What does the coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae have in common with surface ice on an asteroid called 24 Themis? According to an article in Nature, both are relics of the past and should no longer exist.

The coelacanth is a living fossil. The first live Latimeria chalumnae was found in 1938. The surface ice on 24 Themis was discovered much later.

Recently, Nature published two letters on the surface ice of the asteroid. 24 Themis orbits the Sun at about 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from it in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (1 AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun.)

There is still surprisingly much water ice on the surface of 24 Themis. However, astronomers who believe in billions of years would not expect ice to remain on the relatively warm surface of an asteroid so they have had to think hard to find explanations for this ”anomaly”, such as (a) ice continually rises to the surface from deeper in the asteroid or (b) impacts with other asteroids keep the surface covered by ice.

A much more logical explanation would be to acknowledge that 24 Themis is not billions of years old. Like comets, Saturn’s moon Titan and Mercury’s magnetic field, 24 Themis speaks of a young solar system.


Sources:

Campins, Humberto & al. 2010. Water ice and organics on the surface of the asteroid 24 Themis. Nature 464:7293, 1320-1321 (29 April).

Hsieh, Henry H. 2010. A Frosty Finding. Nature 464:7293, 1286-1287 (29 April).

Rivkin, Andrew S. and Joshua P. Emery. Detection of ice and organics on an asteroid surface. Nature 464:7293, 1322-1323 (29 April).