Closest Ever Asteroid Passage Revealed 52
tricaric writes "Another asteroid passed, last March 31st, close to the Earth. This time it was only about 2 Earth radii from the Earth. The observation have been published only a few days ago, because 'Although the observed arc is only 44 minutes, the orbit is quite determinate and, given the exceptional nature of this close approach, the object is now receiving a designation.' Check out the ORSA animation!"
Misleading Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
check out the 1972 daylight fireball [agleia.de]. It came so close it actually skipped off the atmosphere. There are plenty of other close encounters in the literature that came well before this.
Re:It was tiny... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe it would have been good if it did hit us (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Because a big, fat, headline making impact (or splash) would really catch everyone's attention. A miss just catches our (the nreds') interest for a bit. If people perceive that there is an actual threat, perhaps space exploration and planetary defense will be taken seriously for a change.
That's no moon! (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to call that an asteroid, then this [http] is also an asteroid? This was a meteor that passed right through Earth's atmosphere in 1976, with a perehelion of 58,000 metres.
Although, I think the point here is that this is the closest observed astronomically. It's like seeing the meteor before it hits the atmosphere, I guess. Anyway, the astronomers are all in a tizzy over it, so that must be a good thing.