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Sep. 29th 2004 -Toutatis
Asteroid Coming Too Close?

From Ian Gurney
iangurney@yahoo.com
3-28-4



Jeff,
 
I read with interest the article entitled "HAARP, China, Russia And The Moon" and noticed the following quote from Michael Goodspeed's comment: "He claimed that our government is not only aware of an imminent asteroid threat, but they have even set a date for its inevitable arrival -- September 29th, 2004. He also stated that the asteroid has been named "St. Michael", in accordance with the Celtic holiday, observed on the 29th." (See Goodspeed's Comment below)
 
Interestingly, I wrote the following article in the UK press in February this year:
 
"On September 29th this year a 3 mile long asteroid will make the closest predicted approach of any asteroid or comet to Earth during the next 30 years, say scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth Orbiting Programme Office*. They predict the asteroid will come within 963,000 miles of Earth..................a very near miss.
 
Asteroid 4179 Toutatis was named after a Celtic/Gallic god whose name is often invoked in the well known comic book series "The Adventures of Asterix," set in ancient Gaul. Toutatis is the protector of Asterix and his compatriots, who fear nothing except that someday the sky may fall on their heads.
 
It is one of the largest known "Potentially Hazardous Asteroids" (PHA) that approaches our planet on a Near Earth Orbit (NEO). Close encounters with Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter constantly alter the shape of the asteroid's path as it loops through the solar system every 3.98 years. On October 31st. 2000 the asteroid passed less than 29 lunar distances from Earth. The September 29th. fly-pass will come within four lunar distances of the Earth.
 
Toutatis also has one of the strangest rotations yet observed in the solar system. Instead of the spinning about a single axis, as do the planets and the vast majority of asteroids, it "tumbles" somewhat like a rugby football when it bounces.
 
At three miles long it would present a terrible danger to the Earth if it were to collide with the planet, although scientists at NASA say this is unlikely. It is travelling at a speed of about 20 miles per second and if it struck the ocean would unleash a "mega tsunami" or giant tidal wave that could reach around the entire globe, inundating millions of hectares of land, destroying coastal habitations and killing perhaps millions of people.
 
If it hit land it could completely destroy an area the size of Europe and would raise enough dust into the atmosphere to change the climate of the planet completely, causing a mini ice age that would freeze crops, destroy plant life and pre-empt a global famine. It would also completely destroy the ozone layer.
 
On Friday September 1st. 2000 the 2000 QW7 asteroid passed within 2.4 million miles of the earth. In cosmic terms this was a near miss. A scientist equated it's closeness to earth as being comparable to a man at one end of a tennis court throwing a marble at a man at the other end of the court and missing his head by the width of a hand.
 
By comparison Toutatis will, at 963,000 miles, be passing almost three times closer to the Earth than 2000 QW7. Toutatis will be so bright that skywatchers will be able to easily see it through binoculars.
 
An orbit simulation of the close approach of asteroid Toutatis can be
found at:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db?name=4179
Copyright: Ian Gurney February 5 2004.
 
Research Links:
*http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?objects:Toutatis;main</ FONT>
*http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/4179_Toutatis/toutatis.html
 
Ian Gurney is a journalist, broadcaster and author of the bestseller "The
Cassandra Prophecy" published by International Global Press. ISBN
0953581314.
__________
 
Another site about Toutatis:
http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~hudson/Research/Asteroids/4179/
__________
 
Mr. Goodspeed's Comment -
 
From Michael Goodspeed
Goodspeed743@aol.com
3-28-4
 
Dear Jeff -
 
After reading the comments of Mr. Beach on your site, I am compelled to share with you an entirely anecdotal account of an experience I had last summer in Mesa, AZ.
 
While staying at a short-term rental apartment in Mesa, I met a man who claimed to have worked on a "missile defense project" at Fort Greely, Alaska. He claimed that the real purpose of this "project" was not to guard against nuclear attack...but rather to serve as the last line of defense against a doomsday asteroid. He claimed that our government is not only aware of an imminent asteroid threat, but they have even set a date for its inevitable arrival -- September 29th, 2004. He also stated that the asteroid has been named "St. Michael", in accordance with the Celtic holiday, observed on the 29th.
 
It is my understanding that most scientists do not believe a nuclear missile would effectively "deflect" an enormous asteroid, and when I pointed this out to this person, he replied, "It is better to get hit with buck shot than a slug."
 
I am aware of possible logical flaws in this man's assertion...but for whatever it is worth, he seemed sincere, and he had nothing to gain by deliberately lying to me.
 
Comment
From P. Michel
 
Check out this image of the path on Sept. 29, 2004. The earth and Toutatis are on top of one another.
 
Asteroid 4179 Toutatis was discovered in 1989 and is listed here...
 
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Dangerous.html
 
 
Maybe there is some truth to this, AND maybe---in support of what I said in my previous e-mail---anyone can pick an asteroid out of a list and associate it with an occult-laden impact date, while furthering a hidden agenda (Star Wars). We'll see...
 
My first hunch was that the story smells fishy, but it definitely has an air of plausibility to it. But, wouldn't it need to have such an air of plausibility for people to accept it as justification to further an agenda such as Star Wars?
 
Peter
 
Another Close Asteroid Fly-By
 
 
Comment
From Melody Mehta
3-30-4
 
Jeff
 
There are a couple of additional interesting points to note about Toutatis. In 1979, the famous alien contactee Billy Meier published a book that predicted that an asteroid would threaten Earth in this timeframe. Amazingly, Meier predicted that the asteroid would be named 'Toutatis' when it was discovered. Toutatis was subsequently discovered and named exactly as Meier predicted in 1989, a full 10 years after this prediction was published! I note that Meier never said Toutatis would necessarily collide with Earth at this time, but that it would 'threaten' Earth.
 
The second thing I would note about Toutatis is that a Harvard-NASA report evaluating the orbit of Toutatis, uses a fictitious planet named 'Fatum' in a similar orbit that they planned to collide with Earth in September of 2004 as a device for ascertaining the orbit of Toutatis. Why would they do this unless there was some level of uncertainty about what Toutatis is likely to do? I quote from the report:
 
"Hence a possibility of the Toutatis-Earth collision is not excluded but it is completely unpredictable. To investigate conditions of a hypothetical collision of a minor planet with the Earth we made the following numerical simulation. Based on the Toutatis' orbit, we deduced such orbital elements for a fictitious minor planet "Fatum" that a shape of the orbit was very similar to that of Toutatis, but we knew in advance that "Fatum" would certainly collide with the Earth in September 2004 and we calculated values of the impact parameters.
 
"We created a set of 638 artificial observations of "Fatum" in 1988-1997 for the same dates and with the same random observational errors like those of Toutatis. Then we corrected the "Fatum's" orbit for different observational intervals to examine the exactness of the impact prediction in 2004. We found that in 1993 we would be sure that the collision is inevitable, and in 1997 we could determine an impact area on the Earth´s surface in range of a square of 100*100 km. We show that if we knew the impact date so early we could undertake an action to avoid the collision by trying to change the "Fatum's" heliocentric velocity only by one cm/sec."
 
The URL for the report ishere: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1998AcA....48..547S
I am also intrigued by the choice of name for the fictitious planet 'Fatum'.
Is it a reference to 'Fate', or perhaps to Fatima?
 
Regards,
 
Melody Mehta
 
 
Comment
From SF 3-30-4
 
Hi Jeff -
 
Regarding this Comment from Melody:
 
"There are a couple of additional interesting points to note about Toutatis. In 1979, the famous alien contactee Billy Meier published a book that predicted that an asteroid would threaten Earth in this timeframe. Amazingly, Meier predicted that the asteroid would be named 'Toutatis' when it was discovered. Toutatis was subsequently discovered and named exactly as Meier predicted in 1989, a full 10 years after this prediction was published! I note that Meier never said Toutatis would necessarily collide with Earth at this time, but that it would 'threaten' Earth."
 
-----
 
The 'Meier' book was apparently called, "Existing Life in the Universe". Meier does not sell it on his site.
 
There is a search engine, for example, at the huge Vancouver Public Library (online) that will search for any book in print or out of print...globally.
 
'Existing Life In The Üniverse' does not come up in the search, which means that if Meier did publish it, he didn't get an ISBN for it (which means he self-published it).
 
Which also means you have to just take his word for it that he published it when he says he did and that he said what he did in it.
 
To CLAIM a book was published is one thing. To offer ROCK SOLID documentation is quite another. The Meier claim is tenuous 'evidence' at best.
 
 
Comment
From Michael Davo
3-31-4
 
Dear Jeff,
 
Just wanted you to know the Meier book in question "Existentes Leben Im Universum" (German language only) is currently available at the FIGU website that supports the Meier case. Here is a link: http://www.figu.org/download/preisliste.pdf (see page 27 of PDF document). The cost is CHF 50 ($44 USD). 388 pages; Edition: 1978, 1993.
 
By the way, I have no affiliation with Billy Meier or his group nor do I have anything to gain monetarily or otherwise from the sale of his book.
 
 
 
Comment
From Stephen
4-1-4
 
Hi Jeff,
 
Sorry, I feel the need to speak out in slight anger.
 
That this news story seems to have been taken over by someone claiming a book by Billy Meier is somehow linked in with this
 
Have you read: Spaceships of the Pleiades - The Billy Meier Story by Kal Korff ?
 
I have read that recently. I had also read the book 'Light Years' some years earlier
 
The Billy Meier case looks very weak indeed after reading Kal's book. People have made some nice money out of the sales of their books and various merchandise, i think now for too many years. I would love to see the hoaxes hung up to dry so that the people that investigate these subjects can focus on other cases. Other cases that merit their attention
 
What amazes me, are still the large numbers of people that believe this elaborate hoax for so many years
 
With regards: the asteroid itself. A near miss yes but i think a collision with the earth seems unlikely when you see the miss distance.
 
At the jpl site given to check the orbits of these asteroids, there are a large number of them listed on the site (just the known rocks)
 
If people really wanted to do something useful, I would recommend they put that Billy Meier book down and start checking the orbits of all those rocks from the present day, and go forward into the future as far as they like, to see if we can find any more real close calls !!
 
I'm slowly working my way through the list as time permits: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/
 
Regards,
Steve


Response To Stephen re: Meier/Toutatis
 
From Michael Horn
michael@theyfly.com
4-2-4
 
Well, Stephen, perhaps you should direct your anger to the twice, publicly self-admitted liar, Mr. Korff, the entirety of whose "scholarship" on the Meier case has been thoroughly debunked by both James Deardorff and Jeroen Jansen (see links at: www.theyfly.com)
 
And, since you're concerned about having hoaxes hung up to dry, let's start with the "Amazing" Randi, who first proclaimed the Meier case a hoax without offering any proof or substantiation, and who has now retracted his claim. Then consider the plight of the international professional skeptics' organization that accepted the challenge to duplicate only one of Meier's photos and one of his films, three years ago, and not only failed but whose representative, Mr. Vaughn Rees, publicly refused (on the Art Bell show) to have their photos subjected to the same scientific standards Meier's were.
 
Now, unless you have something substantial to enter as proof against Meier, I suggest you do a little research (tons of documents available for FREE at www.theyfly.com) and you'll see that not only was Meier ahead of the game re Toutatis but that there are literally dozens of such prophetically accurate items in copyrighted, published documents and books that constitute proof to a legal standard, years, even decades before the information was "officially" confirmed.
 
Those are the ironclad facts, much as they may make you and few other people uncomfortable.
 
Considering how difficult it is for many people to handle the, now proven authentic, Meier case, is it any wonder that actual contact with beings more advanced is highly unlikely for some time to come?
 
Michael Horn
Authorized American Media Representative
The Billy Meier Contacts
www.theyfly.com




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