An Asteroid Passed By Earth At About Half the Distance Between Our Planet and Moon (smithsonianmag.com) 161
On Monday at 7:47 A.M. EST, an asteroid thought to be between 36 and 111 feet wide passed roughly 120,000 miles from Earth -- and astronomers didn't spot it until Saturday. Smithsonian reports: According to astronomer Eric Edelman at the Slooh Observatory, 2017 AG13 is an Aten asteroid, or a space rock with an orbital distance from the sun similar to that of Earth. AG13 also has a particularly elliptical orbit, which means that as it circles the sun it also crosses through the orbits of both Venus and Earth. Lucky for us, 2017 AG13 wasn't a planet killer; according to Wall, the asteroid was in the size range of the space rock that exploded in Earth's atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February, 2013. According to Deborah Byrd at EarthSky, that meteor exploded 12 miles in the atmosphere, releasing 30 times the energy of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. Not only did it break windows in six cities, it also sent 1,500 people to the hospital. That meteor also came out of the blue, and researchers are still trying to figure out its orbit and track down its origins. While 2017 AG13 would have caused minor damage if it hit Earth, the close call highlights the dangers of asteroids.
Giant meteor 20?? (Score:2, Funny)
Once again inanimate rock you have failed us you helped out the dinosaurs god really does hate us
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Once again inanimate rock you have failed us you helped out the dinosaurs god really does hate us
By no means. This is just God's way of reminding us not to get caught doing what the dinosaurs got caught doing.
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Once again inanimate rock you have failed us you helped out the dinosaurs god really does hate us
By no means. This is just God's way of reminding us not to get caught doing what the dinosaurs got caught doing.
Yup, eating and procreating are evil things. You will burn in an imaginary hell forever!
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I hear those things are pretty addictive...
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I voted for "Extinction Event Asteroid" in 2016....
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Heckling the Solar system: (Score:2)
"SPACEBAAAALL!"
meteor also came out of the blue (Score:3)
There is no blue...in SPAAACE!
a space rock with an orbital distance from the sun (Score:5, Funny)
Presumably, that's why it almost hit us.
Re:a space rock with an orbital distance from the (Score:4, Informative)
A common measure of the "size" of an orbit is the semimajor axis -- which is half the length of the ellipse. You can have an orbit with a semimajor axis intermediate between those of Earth and Venus that can intersect both of them at various times, if its eccentricity is big enough.
Every gravitational interaction between two bodies alters both their orbits, to a degree that depends on their relative masses and on how close the approach is. This one's orbit will almost certainly change significantly -- hell, even Earth's orbit will change, but by an amount too small to observe.
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Aten asteroids are defined by having the semi-major axis of their elliptical orbit be less than one AU. So your guess about 'mean orbit' is pretty close.
A list of known Aten asteroids [wikipedia.org] doesn't seem to be updated with this one yet.
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I believe GP was puckishly alluding to the fact a "near-miss" by definition implies an instantaneous orbital distance approximately equal to that of the Earth.
As for near Earth asteroid orbits being perturbed -- sure. It's believed that most of them will remain in their orbits for only a few million years before they are ejected or hit something.
But it may clarify things to note that asteroids routinely strike the Earth's atmosphere. Automated systems on any night might pick up a dozen meteors an hour you
Minor damage (Score:1)
In what world does 30 times the energy of Hiroshima qualify as "minor damage"?
Re:Minor damage (Score:5, Insightful)
In what world does 30 times the energy of Hiroshima qualify as "minor damage"?
in the world where it explodes 30 times higher in the sky than the Hiroshima bomb.
Re:Minor damage (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, but their target/placement isn't. Look for the missing islands in the atoll where they tested the really big bombs.
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Pedantic note: The bomb dropped on Hiroshima wasn't "nuclear", it was "atomic". "Nuclear" (in the context of bombs) is short for "thermonuclear", which is a type of bomb that uses nuclear fusion to achieve most of its yield. They accomplish this using a smaller fission bomb to set off the fusion part of the bomb. "Atomic" bombs are fission-only devices with generally much smaller yields.
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Pedantic note: The bomb dropped on Hiroshima wasn't "nuclear", it was "atomic".
They are all "nuclear". Fission splits the nucleus in two.
> uses nuclear fusion to achieve most of its yield.
Not necessarily. In a big bomb, most of the yield can actually come from fission of the U238 tamper in the secondary.
The "Tsara Bomba" was only 50MT instead of 100 because the replaced the U238 damper with lead.
> "Atomic" bombs are fission-only devices
No, not always. They can be fusion-boosted single-stage weapons. :-)
You're not real great at this "being pedantic" lark eh?
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In the terms of warheads aka bombs nuclear and atomic means the exact same thing.
None of the words either implies fission (n)or fusion. That is true for languages like english, german etc.
If you want to talk about fission bombs you use the word fission.
If you want to talk about fusion bombs you use the word fusion, however in this case you can also call it a hydrogen bomb (again: common in languages like english and german).
But thank you, Padawan, that you you are concerned about language hygiene, that is i
Re:Minor damage (Score:5, Insightful)
In what world does 30 times the energy of Hiroshima qualify as "minor damage"?
in the world where it explodes 30 times higher in the sky than the Hiroshima bomb.
In a world where larger asteroids could wipe out most complex life on this planet, a rock "only" big enough to destroy a city is still pretty minor.
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In what world does 30 times the energy of Hiroshima qualify as "minor damage"?
in the world where it explodes 30 times higher in the sky than the Hiroshima bomb.
In a world where larger asteroids could wipe out most complex life on this planet, a rock "only" big enough to destroy a city is still pretty minor.
IN A WORLD, where larger asteroids could wipe out most complex life on this planet, ONE MAN stands between the wrath of God and life on earth as we know it.
Coming this summer, SPACE POPE.
Correction! (Score:1)
The YOUNG Space Pope! Starring Jude Lawe! Coming soon on HBO! With Tit-Tays!
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We need one of these to hit (Score:1)
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Nope - common folk will say that after one hit, the odds of another hit is vanishingly small, so why bother doing anything. In actuality the hits are statistically independent, but try to explain that on family TV.
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In the sense that when a big one eventually hits, we'll all vanish.
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Given the US, I'd say it would serve no good use but to get people to fall onto their knees, pray and essentially do nothing useful.
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"get people to fall onto their knees, pray and essentially do nothing useful."
Redundant
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Should've written "generally" instead of "essentially", agreed.
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"I'll pray for you" is the same as saying "I want to look like I care, but I don't care enough to actually do anything useful to help and can't admit there's nothing I can do"
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should be "help and/or can't"
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"I'll pray for you" is the same as saying "I want to look like I care, but I don't care enough to actually do anything useful to help and can't admit there's nothing I can do"
I always figured it was a passive-aggresive way of saying "I'm holier-than-thou."
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I volunteer Washington DC with all of congress and the pres and vice-pres in town when it happens
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I volunteer Washington DC with all of congress and the pres and vice-pres in town when it happens
You figure President Rex Tillerson will sort out the problem?
Lucky (Score:2)
If it didn't hit the Earth, how are we more or less lucky that it wasn't a planet killer?
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That's what *I* thought. Actually I wish it HAD been a planet killer -- becuase it missed us.
And just like a gambler, that obviously means our chances for the next few years / millenia is greatly reduced.
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False application of statistics. If statistics say that you'll have a flood every 30 years on average doesn't mean that because you had a flood this year it's impossible that there will be one next year. The chance for a flood is 1/30 every year. No matter how many floods you had in the past years.
Same for asteroid hits. One missing today doesn't increase the chance of one hitting tomorrow.
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Are asteroids truly independent from each other? Couldn't they come from the same asteroid "cloud" or "belt"?
I'm honestly asking, I have no idea.
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In that case the estimates are false, but the statistics don't change. With more cases happening it will have to be adjusted from "on average every 30 years" to "on average every 5 years", but it still remains the same chance, independent of whether there was a flood last year.
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And here, ladies and gentlemen, is why Las Vegas floats on a sea of money.
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Speed in Furlongs per Fortnight ? (Score:2, Insightful)
36 feet wide, 120,000 miles ?!
GROW UP.
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Talking to your reflection in the mirror isn't going to help you mature. You might try interacting with other people.
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The radius of the asteroid does not affect the chances of impact.
The chances of an asteroid hitting the earth, if randomly directed within a circle equal to the mean orbital distance of the moon, is one chance in (Rm/re)**2, which is (384/6.4)**2, or about one chance in 3600. The size of the asteroid does not have a material effect on the chances of impact because ra << re for all asteroids. Even Ceres has a radius that's an order of magnitude smaller than the Earth's.
The size (mass, really) of the as
The dangers... (Score:3, Insightful)
> the close call highlights the dangers of asteroids.
One: Nothing happened. So how dangerous was this? If it HAD hit, maybe several hundred people would've visited hospitals and some windows woudl have had to be replaced.
Two: The danger is teaching people "an asteroid killed the dinosaurs, what if an asteroid kills us?". That is dangerous. A really BIG asteroid killed the dinosaurs. These small ones are nothing to worry about. Let's assume this thing is aiming for earth, but hits randomly somewhere inside the moon's orbit. The earth has a radius of about 6000km, the moon's orbit about 300000km. A ratio of 50, so the chances of hitting earth are 1/2500. The people making a stir about these things are the ones that stand to gain employment from scaring the general public about this.
Re:The dangers... (Score:4, Insightful)
It was Chelyabinsk-sized. A direct hit on a city could kill millions of people.
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Would the Chelyabinsk rock have caused millions of deaths had hit in exactly the same way, except with a major city as its epicenter?
My non-rocket-scientist reading of the wikipedia page made it sound like it's shallow entry angle caused it to lose a lot of its energy in the atmosphere and that secondary effects (like broken windows from the airburst) was where most of the injuries came from. Although that kind of airburst over a place filled with glass curtain-wall skyscrapers may actually make it more da
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Ignoring the flash flood something like this would probably cause, yes...
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I guess its an angle of entry thing, where with a shallow trajectory it gets more time to heat up in the atmosphere and explode there versus a high trajectory where it direct impact would cause a problem.
But assuming a direct hit over deep water in the Pacific, what kind of coastal inundation could we really expect? Can a 10-40 meter rock displace enough water in the center of an ocean actually produce significant wave action far away?
The underwater nuke tests like Wigwam (30 kt) don't seem to have done mu
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The other way to answer the OP, though.... while these events are rare (on the order of once every 60 years), I think that describing something 13,000 to 14,000 tons traveling ~40,000 miles per hour as "nothing to worr
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It was Chelyabinsk-sized. A direct hit on a city could kill millions of people.
I am having trouble putting this in perspective. Could you convert to VW Beetles, Libraries of Congress, or their metric equivalents?
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Libraries of Congress
Well the library of congress is a library as we all know. All libraries have a librarian. So just imagine that millions of these librarians gathered and decided to live in one place forming a city. Now imagine that this asteroid came in and killed the millions of librarians in the city.
So the answer is millions of libraries of congress.
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Let me guess - you're an house philosopher with Greenpeace?
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Re:The dangers... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't just divide the numbers. Gravity pulls stuff in, and the windows are tiny. Think Apollo 13 - only a tiny offset makes the difference between direct catastrophic entry and bouncing off the atmosphere.
And we have NO WAY to change that trajectory anyhow.
Also, statistically the chances are that most humans will die in such an impact - they're rare but when they happen they are INCREDIBLY serious. This was a BIG object, it would have changed life forever. It would have been "an event" not just a random meteorite landing on a desert or ocean.
Also, the bit you're missing? We basically missed this. It's been circling the Sun forever, it's been going to hit us forever, and we didn't spot it. We probably don't have a way to effectively spot it and others like it.
And a few thousands of a degree change in its arc and it would have been something that people recorded for the rest of future history and killed millions. It was only sheer chance that we "escaped".
So, actually, as a mathematician and therefore of a scientific mind, this is a damn sight more important than what some orange fool said about some actress. By orders of magnitude.
Roll on the day when THIS is the news and not all that other junk.
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And we have NO WAY to change that trajectory anyhow.
Sure we do, or at least we would if we invested some resources into the project. If we spotted city-killers like this far out enough (with enough warning time), it's entirely possible to change their trajectory through various means: solar sails, painting them white, strapping a rocket engine to the side, etc. But we need to know about it well, well in advance so we can accurately predict whether it's a threat, and then work on modifying its trajectory o
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But then they would be trying to invade it and/or make it crash into the Earth, which is what we were trying to avoid. So, er, nevermind.
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The people making a stir about these things are the ones that stand to gain employment from scaring the general public
So, news writers and editors then.
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Absolutely!
The thing is I do things that are WAY more risky on a daily basis. Like everybody. I'll take the risk of "being above ground when an asteroid takes a shot at us" over "driving to work" any day.
Meh (Score:1)
Carrington event.
Supervolcano.
Asteroid impact.
Widespread cretinism.
Take your pick.
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Look out for "Cascadia Subduction Zone", if you live in the west of the USA/Canada (or Japan's east coast)
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All of the above.
Oh, is it Christmas again? Or was that last week?
What in the hell is "Slooh"? (Score:2)
"The solstice is a moment when the changing seasons and celestial rhythms of the planet are in unison as the northern latitudes acknowledge the shortest day of the year while the southern latitudes mark the calendarâ(TM)s march forward from the longest. Slooh will celebrate this global phenomenon by featuring live views of the Sun from both hemispheres as a means of fostering our deep and primal connection to Earth and sky. [slooh.com]
Do they also feature live views of Wiccans dancing around Stonehenge at the Equi
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That doesn't encourage me very much... :(
I need my safe space (Score:2, Funny)
Space rocks must be outlawed!
Astronomers (Score:2)
Were too busy trying to make the Trump/Russia connection,
AG13 just snuck up on them.
"Will someone bring Eric some fresh knickers, he's stinking up the place!"
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About EVERY halfway decent rock that hit earth in the more recent past was in Russia. C'mon people, it's SO damn obvious!
The moon is far (Score:4, Informative)
remember this is the real scale of the Earth to the moon.
http://colchrishadfield.tumblr.com/image/57696912776
Last viable candidate to drop out (Score:2)
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Even though my candidate [hoboninja.com] didn't win, we could say he came close.
What is the solution? Detect ... and deflect. (Score:1)
Well... (Score:2)
That too ;)
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Asteroids are a Chinese hoax.
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I think that proctologists should be renamed astronauts.
I never understood lying about jackasses (Score:1)
> But seriously, there's no need to make up stories about Trump. Just put a Twitter connected smartphone in his hands and he'll do the job of discrediting himself.
Yeah I never understood telling lies about nasty people like Trump and Clinton - you only discredit *yourself* when you tell lies. If you want to point out that Trump and Clinton suck, just quote what they actually said. They are self-flaming.
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APK, get over yourself. You are the only one who cares.
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Pussy? Really? I wasn't the one who backed down last time. Keep it coming, you only prove your mental illness.
Also, it is kind of funny that you post links to where I totally thrashed you. You really need to check yourself, you always declare victory before even making a point. The only person who thinks you win arguments is you, posting as if you are an interested third party, as if that isn't obvious.
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You mean like you using a bridge? Who doesn't get computing? Also, your comment about using group policy to distribute hosts files as if it is a good solution to the problem?
Yeah, I never get the best of you, except in every conversation we have.
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Um, if you are using a bridged router, you have about the most insecure network I have heard of. Did you build Hillary's email server too?
I also forgot about your since recanted DNS BL mistake, I also pointed that one out to you, and you corrected your list to reflect the change.
Also, I have to ask, why do you keep mentioning a book name as if it is some kind of obscure tome?
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Sure they can...if they are morons who don't know how DNS works, and is REQUIRED for Active Directory already. I can see you haven't run any networks, it was already obvious from your bridge comments, and the fact that you don't even understand what a bridge is. But this seals the deal.
I also have to ask...do you often forget previous conversations? I didn't pull that group policy comment out of my ass, it was a response you gave me as to why you feel DNS shouldn't host the entries from your hosts files,
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If you want people to remind you of things you have said, create an account and use it. Until then, you are asking for the needle you threw in a haystack. After all, you are one of the most prolific posters on this board.
Also, if you have this much trouble remembering conversations you have participated in, perhaps you need to be tested for alzheimer's.
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You are simultaneously posting anonymously to avoid being quoted, and asking to be quoted. Perhaps you need to go back to high school, yous logic is terrible.
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Login and comment, then you can request people to quote your old comments.
It just makes me so warm and fuzzy when you show me this much attention. It is so cute that you think saying the same thing over and over again will change the response though, it is almost like you don't understand how conversations work.
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Funny, but you are the one who is claiming to not remember having conversations you have had with me previously and asking for proof. This would be an indication of previously undiagnosed alzheimer's, which would indeed be a brain defect.
When you start logging in to make comments, you can ask people to provide you with proof, until then your use of AC is intentionally hiding your posting history. You know this, and have even commented on it yourself previously when challenged about not logging in. The on
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Do you honestly think my answer will change significantly the more you post the exact same request? Who do you think is being made into a fool here?
Ask again, pretty please.
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Show us.
No.
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It appears that I am still here. Am I running on a treadmill? You are the one who hides your posts behind AC, so wouldn't you be the one running and hiding?
Show us.
No, you know that I can't, which is intentional on your part. You hide, not I.
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Funny, as all you have exposed is yourself, and no one wants to see that.
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Aww, did you want to send me flowers to express your undying love for me? Grow up APK, I am younger than you, but I know better than to use my real name online. The only reason it burns you is that you want to stalk and harass me in person. I don't need to give my real name, as it has no bearing on the conversation, and won't help you to disprove anything I have typed.
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Other than it not being true as a legit birth certificate was produced, riddle me this Batman...lets say he was born in Kenya, is a muslim, and wants to take all of our guns.
He had 8 years in office. What exactly did he do that makes any of that relevant?
(...waiting for the blurry obfuscated implausible answer, like "he destroyed the economy" when he produced the a huge economic recovery or "he cozied up with Isis" when in fact he bombed the crap out of them, or "he was too soft on our enemies" when he cam
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He let Russia take Crimea?
You asked, just figured I would deliver.
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