if you are looking at "trends", then you aren't actually predicting anything. Predicting requires physical models, not data.

Weather predictions have been historically inaccurate. Why would anyone think that global warming or this new paper are any more accurate? We won't know that global warming is coming until it hits us, much like we won't know an ice age is coming until it hits us.

Oops! Haha.

This depends entirely on where you are in the world. And I restress that the asteroid is only 300 meters wide. It would still be difficult to see.

yes but the sun would also give a glair on any ground-based telescopes...

because the rock is 300 meters wide... space is a lot larger than that. Also the sun makes it difficult to see from the ground

I am surprised they haven't found this before. They are planning on installing satellites at L4 and L5, you would think they would figure out if there was anything there waiting on us.

There are 5 Lagrange points. One on the other side of the sun, one on the other side of us, 1 ahead of earth in orbit, one behind earth in orbit, and one in between us and the sun.

To give a 1 million pound object the delta v required to move much beyond a few hundred miles beyond earths orbit is still enormous

Definitely not true... The amount of fuel required to move the ISS to GSO from LEO (26,000ish miles versus the 100-1200 miles it currently sits at) would be staggering. Keep in mind that it is a million pound object. At launch, the shuttle weighs almost 4.4 million pounds, but only weighs around 200,000 pounds in orbit. At best (really stretching it here), it would require 20 million pounds of fuel to move the ISS just a fraction of the 25,000 miles it needs to go in space using the same payload ratio as the shuttle. And you have to find a way to get that 20 million pounds of fuel into space. If the space shuttle were to complete this task, at 53,000 pounds of fuel (max payload shuttle can take), it would require 377 shuttle launches to get the fuel there. Each one of those shuttle launches would require 4 million pounds of fuel to get into LEO. Thats 1500 million pounds of fuel.

Orbital correction maneuvers are nothing compared to the delta v required to transfer the ISS into an orbit far enough away from earth to not cause problems. The VASMIR engines are really only good for high specific impulse any way (very efficient but with low thrust levels). The reason those are the orbital correction motors is for this reason, it requires much less fuel weight and the manuevers require relatively low thrust. Also, adding more engines is only going to add more weight, which will require more fuel, which will be more weight... so then you will need more engines, then more fuel for those engines... this gets out of control very quickly. Believe it or not, there is a reason they brought the space station into space in pieces and assembled it there. There isn't realistically enough propulsion to move an object that large more than a few kilometers at a time.

They figured this out like 8 months ago...

I'm not sure how it was back in the 80's but as a recent graduate (2010) and current Graduate Student in engineering, with the job field how it is now, you need minimum a 3.5 GPA to even consider getting a decent job straight out of undergrad. A masters is the only other way to really search for a job. Otherwise, you can really only count on 1 or 2 job offers coming out of college, both of which will involve some sort of CAD or low level programming. In my graduating class, i know of at least 3 people who should not have graduated but skirted some of the requirements because of solely who they knew. IMO that downgrades my degree. The Bachelor's degree is turning into a high school diploma.

Because the worm was designed to destroy the centrifuges. The worm fed signals to the centrifuges that made them operate beyond their operating capabilities, effectively destroying them

So it's not really a large source of water, but rather a large gathering of water...?

They say this will cut down on crime, but criminals who don't want to get found will just use fake license plates, and then this just becomes another burden on the taxpayer. Honestly, I can't figure out why anyone would want to live in Massachussets or San Franscisco with the wacky laws they are implementing in those areas.