Asteroid To Pass Near Earth On Monday 183
TigerNut writes "Asteroid 2011 MD was discovered on June 22 by LINEAR, and its flight path will take it within 8000 miles (12000 km) of Earth. Orbital predictions indicate that its flight path will be significantly altered by this close approach."
8000 miles = Close shave (Score:4, Informative)
That's deceptively close, 8000 miles is the diameter of the earth. This thing is only gonna miss us by an earths width!
Re:8000 miles = Close shave (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty close :) I hope nothing unforeseen happens (like heat from the Sun causing gas to evaporate and the flightpath to deviate slightly - the scenario as described by Niven and Pournelle in one of their books). Would be embarassing.
Fortunately even if it does hit, it's only 8-18 meters across. According to the asteroid impact effect calculator, that'd be 720 KT of TNT when hitting the ground (assuming standard parameters, 18 meters and an iron asteroid). Tough if it were to hit you, but small chance of that. Calculator is here: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/ [ic.ac.uk]
Re:8000 miles = Close shave (Score:4, Funny)
Yup. It definitely would cause a flesh wound if it were to strike an individual. You might even get a permanent scar.
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Re:8000 miles = Close shave (Score:5, Funny)
So the same as our tactical nukes ~ 750 KT, enough to wipe out Manhattan. Perhaps statistically the chance of hitting a major city is low, but if it does hit a city, it would be tragic and the stats would no longer matter. Even if it was a 1 in a billion chance, I'd be all for spending a trillion dollars trying to nuke it out of existence.
You work for the TSA, don't you?
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Sounds more like the Pentagon than the TSA. :-P
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Yet (in Australia at least) our politicians aren't willing to do anything about climate change, because "maybe it won't happen."
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And people wonder why the US has a big budget deficit?
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TFA says that if this object were to hit Earth, it would likely explode harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.
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Half the asteroids can't be detected until after they pass us. You can't easily (especially for small ones) see asteroids coming from the direction of the sun.
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The linked article mentions 11,000 miles at it's closest. This may be after the update (they mention the article has been updated, not the exact changes).
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No, that's completely wrong! The article says "there's no chance that the asteroid will hit Earth on this approach," so how can you come up with an 18% probability. Here is where you went wrong: the center of the path of the asteroid is expected to be ~8,000 miles above the surface of Earth at a specific point on the surface, not that the center of the path is expected to have an equal chance of lying on the surface of Earth's 2D projection.
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space elevator anchor ?
Could it break up due to tidal forces? (Score:2)
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Roche limit is defined for gravitationally bound bodies. It's not too much of a stretch to apply it to bulk properties like yield strength, but at the size you're talking about the forces are orders of magnitude off. I don't think the earth *has* a "roche limit" for solid rocky bodies.
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Is there any chance that this could brake into fragments due to tidal forces when it passes close to the Earth?
Depends on if it has disc or drum brakes, I suppose.
Animations (Score:4, Informative)
Animations [discovery.com] Here are some nice animations of the path of the asteroid.
With in the orbit of GPS Satellites (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't worry, the odds are against it. (Score:3)
Law of Large Numbers (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers [wikipedia.org]
Brrr
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The ISS orbit is at about 350 km. If it came that close, chances are high it would collide with the earth as well..
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Yes, and in fact this is closer than all geostationary satellites (communications, TV, etc) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit [wikipedia.org] - which are at 22,000 miles from surface of the Earth, vs. this asteroid's 8,000 miles.
I see 3 Asteroids (Score:2)
There are 3 asteroids in that picture if you look to the right of the one the arrow points out.
Pluto? Is that you? (Score:2)
Probably still pissed with his demotion and wants a fly-by.
Re:Should we worry? (Score:5, Interesting)
The opening paragraph of the fine article: Asteroid 2011 MD, a chunk of rock estimated to be 25 to 55 feet (8 to 18 m) across, [...]
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I'm amazed that 25 feet qualifies as an asteroid.
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Some definitions call anything below fifty meters [wikipedia.org] a meteoroid.
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It's a bit large to merely be cosmic lint, isn't it?
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Re:Should we worry? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm even more amazed that we could accurately detect and track an object of this size.
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well seeing as we only just detected it 4 days ago it's not exactly like we did "track" it or "detect" it.
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well seeing as we only just detected it 4 days ago it's not exactly like we did "track" it or "detect" it.
Your sentence is false by contradiction :-) Have a nice day!
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An asteroid [wikipedia.org] is a somewhat historical term. A meteoroid [wikipedia.org] is a sand- to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System. The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth's (or another body's) atmosphere is called a meteor, or colloquially a shooting star or falling star. If a meteoroid reaches the ground and survives impact, then it is called a meteorite.
Interestingly enough, no designation exists for an asteroid that reaches the ground and survives impact.
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The problem with the definition of an asteroid is that telescopic surveys are not becoming good enough that smaller objects previously not studied are now being spotted, plotted, and designated by the IAU and the Minor Planet Center [minorplanetcenter.net]. The number of asteroids receiving a catalog number has exploded in recent years, to the point that very few are even being named any more. The current number of objects identified is now more than a half million.
It will be interesting to see when that catalog may be "closed"
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I may be wrong, but ELE (Extinction Level Event) might fit.
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Re:Don't underestimate the energy of small asteroi (Score:5, Informative)
Quoting the fine article: "But there's no chance that the asteroid will hit Earth on this approach, and almost no risk at its next close approach, in 2022. If the asteroid did strike, it would probably explode in the upper atmosphere — a fine spectacle, but harmless."
Re:Don't underestimate the energy of small asteroi (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course that's what they said.
Consider this. If they *know* it's going to hit the Earth, and even estimate about where it will hit, there are three choices.
1) Tell the truth and say "It's going to hit here at this time, with the effective energy of X atomic bombs" (I love that SI unit). People will panic. You wouldn't get any sort or orderly evacuation. Imagine if it were to hit near a metro area in the US. Millions of people would be displaced, even if it's only temporary. Now, what if they were off by a couple hundred miles? Aw shit, sorry guys, we were wrong. You evacuated to the impact site. Doesn't matter much, since you're dead.
2) STFU and don't say anything. Always a good choice, except amateur astronomers will likely spot it too. Again, when that makes the news, there will be mass panic, and an abundance of bad intelligence on the impact location, strength, etc.
3) Say "Don't worry, it'll miss us." If that ends up being true, there is no mass panic. No evacuations. No looting, robbing, raping, or pillaging. Life goes on as boring as ever. If it does hit, they can say "Oops, sorry". I'm sure that would be accompanied with a detailed explanation of how they were unable to calculate for some unknown like a freak solar flare or something.
As someone else pointed out, they said it'll miss by about 12,000 kilometers. That sounds safe until you consider that the distance from the Earth to the Moon averages about 384,000 kilometers. Or how about this, the object is going to pass through Geostationary Orbit (GEO) twice (once coming, once going), and at least into Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). It won't be a danger to the ISS, who sits far below that. There are plenty of satellites floating around in MEO and GEO.
It's doubtful an object the size of that asteroid would intersect with a satellite, but it is a risk. That could result in extra space debris, or a rather uncoordinated reentry of a satellite or other "parked" space junk.
So, it's not just going to pass by harmless through empty space. It's going to pass through space where we have a bunch of shit laying around.
Myself, I'm not worried. It's a small rock that has a small risk of hitting the Earth or something close by. I won't discount the possibility that a fast moving rock may hit us very hard and very fast, but if it does, there isn't much we can do about it anyways. If it does hit us an cause an ELE, I'll work on what to do from there. With any luck, it won't crash through the roof of my office, and onto my desk. :)
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Sounds like it's practicing. I think we should nuke it, just to be sure.
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have you ever tried orbitting an asteroid? Nuking it just to be sure is going to be HARD!
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Yes. Yes, we have. [jhuapl.edu] Orbited an asteroid, that is, not the nuking bit. And we'll do it again [nasa.gov] next month. Of course, these are much, much bigger hunks of rock.
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Right, because a golf ball that is about 1/150th the size of a human is exactly like hitting something (say, the Earth) with something that is 1/50,000,000th the size of it. The earth getting hit with a 25 foot object at fast speed is probably less like getting hit in the nuts with a golf ball and more like getting hit in the upper arm by a spec of sand.
Cars? Houses? Pets? People? (Score:1)
Uhh, the damage to earth itself would be minimal. But have you forgotten that people live on the earth, however? I sure wouldn't want an object like that falling on my car, or my home, or into my pool, or onto my dog, or even onto myself. It would cause some pretty bad damage.
Re:Cars? Houses? Pets? People? (Score:5, Funny)
I sure wouldn't want an object like that falling on my car, or my home, or into my pool, or onto my dog, or even onto myself.
and especially not your testicles.
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Re:Cars? Houses? Pets? People? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, it is so small that it wouldn't even hit the earth, so the entire analogy is goofy.
If the asteroid did strike, it would probably explode in the upper atmosphere — a fine spectacle, but harmless.
An asteroid would have to be thousands of feet to create a nuclear winter. I'm sure it could be reasonably smaller and still destroy all life on Earth. The one that may have wiped out the dinosaurs was apparently about 42,000 feet. Whatever it was that hit Tunguska is suspected to have been a couple hundred feet. The asteroids expected to pass near earth this century We have one about 1,000 feet coming in 2029 that (if it hit) would be 65,000 times more powerful than the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.
Worrying about something so small as this is just silly and, frankly, anything that won't wipe out an entire city is fairly insignificant, as far as I'm concerned. I'm thinking about the real threats out there that we couldn't give a shit about, because our society is more concerned with having a pothole filled than a disaster averted (or they're all too busy eagerly hoping for Armageddon, so their goofy prophecies can be "fulfilled").
I punched in what numbers I could find on this object and if it were to hit the earth, it would be "barely audible" even within one mile (5dB). The object has to be significantly larger to even form a crater of any kind. All you'll end up with are small fragments that hit all over an area. I suck at math, but I suspect that with as little of the Earth that is actual land mass and then the even smaller percentage of that which is populated, the odds of even one fragment hitting a populated area are extremely small. It's not like a 25ft or 50ft object is going to hit and burst into fragments directly over a metro area. (I mean, possible, sure, but extremely unlikely).
Here, you can punch in numbers on this and other objects hitting earth, yourself: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/ [ic.ac.uk]
I only really played around with porous and dense objects hitting earth; not a body of water. The couple quick checks I did on it hitting water (depending on depth, of course) show that it would have to hit really close to shore (within a few miles) to have any real impact on the shoreline.
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I've seen that impactor estimator before, and it is pretty interesting.
The sad thing is that those who are alarmist generally haven't been paying attention to the skies anyway. I've seen some spectacular meteor showers including some meteors that I've personally seen that have exploded and produced a shower of sparks that rival or even surpass anything I've seen from a commercial fireworks display (like a 4th of July celebration) and I've even heard a sonic boom before caused by one of these object passing
That's the whole thing... (Score:3)
The first things I want to know are not the distance, but its size and velocity. Because those tell me how hard they better work on knowing the exact distance.
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But if you know how close it's going to pass to Earth, there's no possible way you can know its velocity.... DAMN YOU HEISENBERG!
For the humor impaired, yes, it's meant as a joke. I am well aware that the Uncertainty Principle (which recently has fallen into disfavor anyway) only applies to subatomic particles. You however are so disconnected from the world around you that very crude and simple humor just rushes right past your head. Please, it's time to put down the calipers, go outside, head to a bar an
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I'm uncertain that I understand that. Could you compare it to a dual-state cat in a box? :)
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The first things I want to know are not the distance, but its size and velocity.
Velocity is easy. Its 11 km/s plus five or (at the very most) 10 km/s for the speed the asteroid is passing us at. IIRC many of the asteroids which are in resonance with Earth have just a few km/s of velocity when they pass close. If there is going to be an impact then the most important bit of information will be where will it hit?. For anything smaller than Lucifers Hammer, it will suffice to evacuate the impact site for a while.
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"Velocity is easy. Its 11 km/s plus five or (at the very most) 10 km/s for the speed the asteroid is passing us at. IIRC many of the asteroids which are in resonance with Earth have just a few km/s of velocity when they pass close. If there is going to be an impact then the most important bit of information will be where will it hit?"
Not necessarily. If it were traveling at relativistic speeds (I didn't say anything about natural), an asteroid the size of a locomotive could mean The Long Goodbye. But of course, if it were traveling at a very significant fraction of the speed of light, there wouldn't be any warning, anyway.
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If it were traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, it would not be something from our Solar System either. That would imply an extra-solar or even extra-galactic origin of object.
Yeah, that is possible although space is also big, so mind numbingly big that encountering even something like a grain of sand that had an extra-galactic origin is going to be highly unlikely. Not impossible but that would be an incredibly rare event. Most of the objects in the Solar System, and the stuff you
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"I didn't say anything about natural..."
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The object has to be significantly larger to even form a crater of any kind. All you'll end up with are small fragments that hit all over an area.
The asteroid that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona was about 50 meters across, according to Wikipedia. Looked pretty impressive to me. I don't know how fast this newly discovered asteroid is flying, but if it's ten times as fast the energy would be similar.
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An interesting notion - when I punched the numbers in, the most interesting output was the 68 kT airburst. About four times that of the Nagasaki bomb. At an altitude of 95000 feet.
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Re:Don't underestimate the energy of small asteroi (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting hit in the upper arm by a spec of sand might not hurt you, a human, but it would be devastating to a colony of microbes living on your arm in that spot.
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How much would melt away in reentry? Objects that big have been caught on camera before and thankfully bounced off back into space. I would not want this to hit my house but if only 5 or 6 feet service it would not be a life altering event other than a big pop somewhere or splash. I believe the astroid that killed the dinosars was a quarter mile wide wasn't it? Now that would be devestating.
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It appears to be unresolved which impact crater was the one that killed the non-avian dinosaurs (the avian variety are still here: we call them "birds" now). However, the Chicxulub crater in Mexico dating from around that time was caused by a 6-mile wide asteroid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater [wikipedia.org]
A quarter-mile wide asteroid is nothing to sneeze at, and would probably destroy a city or worse, but isn't nearly as bad as this one which caused a giant cloud to cover the planet. Of course, the deva
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I appreciate your post. Particularly because it gives me a great idea to finish my screenplay of Caddyshack III: Spaceballs 2.
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So as long as it doesn't hit Earth's nuts, everything should be all right. Right?
But seriously. Sure, the energy of the impact depends on mass and speed. And hence also the damage done. And if we were talking about an asteroid of 25 miles across, I'd certainly go and spend my money on some fun before it's all over.
The possible damage an object can have on impact depends on three things: Speed, mass and volume. Now, 7.5m across (that's 25ft in SI units) isn't even a pebble on the stellar scale. Still, if acc
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Heh I thought you were going to recommend a chiropractic adjustment for a moment there.
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Aliens aiming for my balls!?!?!? (Score:2)
Have you ever had a golfer hit a golf ball into your penis and scrotum? Have you?
Okay I'm not so worried about a small asteroid that will burn up in the atmosphere, but if you're telling me some goofy alien with a wicked sense of humour is aiming for my nutsack, you have my attention!!!
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Not everything in this life can be monitored or prevented. There is very little point in spending huge sums of money scanning for world killers as at this point there isnt much we can do about it anyways.
Well, I could revise my plans for what to do with my life savings. And when to do it.
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Knowing about the threat would sure help us develop those means, though, right? You may have accidentally seen at least one asteroid movie (I don't blame you if you haven't, though). The response to the threat, and all of the attend technological innovations, always comes about *after* the Earth is facing imminent destruction. Seems unlikely, but in a world where Steve Buscemi can be selected to be on an Earth-saving mission to Space, anything is possible.
"He's got space dementia!"
anubis did it! (Score:1)
anubis did it!
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I thought Set is responsible for destruction and chaos in the Egyptian mythol... Oh, Stargate. Never mind me butting in with realit... erh, I mean...
It feels weird to question ones imagination with your own. How do the bible guys deal with that?
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Well, let's first of all define what "problem" means. Destruction of a town? Tsunamis? Dust across a continent? Nuclear winter and the end of civilization? How big does the impact have to be to be a "problem"?
Also, due to T=m*v^2/2, it's more a matter of speed than of mass. Does anyone have a reliable source for the speed of various asteroids that clutter our sky?
Re:Sure thing (Score:4, Informative)
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...of the asteroids that we know about...
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Even if it was going to pass close enough to be withing range of, say a space shuttle, they couldn't get one launched in time.
They fact that it was only spotted a few days away is worrying.
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NASA has only done what it has been allowed to. The military (via NASA) put us on the moon.
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How exactly do you intend to use water for fuel?
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And then what? How do you extract more energy from steam than it took to heat the steam?
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It's a lot cheaper to build something in space with materials you get from space than it is to build it on the ground and launch the whole thing up.
No, actually it's not. It takes a lot of oxygen, carbon, water, and limestone to make steel. Once it is made, it needs to be alloyed. Once it is ready, it needs to be cast, then machined, then assembled. In short it requires many tons of infrastructure to make a ton of steel. That doesn't give you any of the specialty metals and alloys, plastics, ceramics, and other materials that you need for a spacecraft. You're actually much better off building things on Earth, launching them, and "fuelling" the
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Yes, [nasa.gov] it [nasa.gov] certainly [nasa.gov] is [nasa.gov] too [jhuapl.edu] bad [nasa.gov] that [nasa.gov] NASA [jhuapl.edu] doesn't [jhuapl.edu] do [jhuapl.edu] anything [mit.edu] anymore. [nasa.gov]
(Sorry [nasa.gov] if [nasa.gov] I [nasa.gov] left [berkeley.edu] out [jhuapl.edu] your [utexas.edu] favorite [nasa.gov] misson [nasa.gov]; there's [nasa.gov] just [caltech.edu] so [nasa.gov] many [nasa.gov].)