What’s Wrong With This Video?

Celestial Mechanics
[courtesy Google Images]

1. A retired military man who’s allegedly “in the know” has warned that
2. A comet that’s 2.5 miles wide is going to
3. Hit the Atlantic Ocean about 200 miles offshore from Brazil and Venezuela;
4. Somewhere between September 15th and September 28th; and,
5. Will cause massive tsunamis that will cause horrendous damage to much of South America, the Caribbean and the Gulf and East coasts of the United States.

That’s a bunch of crap because:

1. At the Equator, the earth rotates at about 1,000 miles per hour. If the comet were to hit 90 minutes earlier, it would land in Africa; if it hit 15 minutes later, it would land in South America.  To know precisely where the comet is going to hit (in the Atlantic, 200 miles off Brazil), we must know precisely when the comet is going to hit.
2. The earth is orbiting the sun at the speed of 66,600 miles per hour (1,110 miles per minute; 18.5 miles per second).
3. Comets are known to travel at speeds ranging from 26 miles per second up to 298 miles per second.
4. To predict that a particular, 2.5 mile wide comet will strike the earth somewhere between September 15th and September 28th is irrational because, during that 13 day period, the earth will have moved almost 6 million miles in its orbit around the sun.
5. The earth’s diameter is about 7,917 miles.  If the earth is orbiting the sun at 66,600 miles per hours and the earth is only 7,917 miles in diameter, then it follows (if I’m doing my math right) that from the moment the “leading edge” of the earth reaches a particular point in its orbit, the “trailing edge” of the earth will cross that same point a little over 7 minutes later. That means that if there’s a 2.5 mile wide comet whose orbit intersects the earth’s orbit, there’s less than a ten minute window of opportunity in an entire year for that comet to hit the earth.
6. The only way that any mortal man can calculate when a comet is going to strike anywhere on the earth (let alone 200 miles off Brazil) is to know exactly where the earth and comet will intersect within a matter of ten minutes or less out of an entire year.  The fact that the unnamed retired military man can’t predict even the date (let alone the particular hour) of the comet’s arrival is evidence that his warning is crapola.
7. Celestial mechanics is a fairly precise science.  Anyone who tells you that a comet, asteroid or planet is definitely going to hit the earth within a period of several weeks or even several hours doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. If your calculations are off by just a few minutes, they’ll be no impact.  Some bodies in our solar system move at such incredible speeds that, in just one minute, they can move over 100,000 miles.  The earth itself has probably traveled at least 4,000 miles since you started reading this article.

Here’s the video.  It’s 11 minutes long.  It’s not really necessary to watch it, but you can if you like.  It’s like scores of similar videos that predict and/or “confirm” that the earth will be hit by a meteor, comet or even unseen planet.  However, if those predictions can’t at least name date when the impact will take place, they’re just guessing, or telling “spook” stories, or perhaps even intentionally dispersing misinformation.