Asteroid Spotted Just Two Hours Before Impacting Earth (cnet.com) 98
Two hours. That's about how much time elapsed between the discovery of asteroid 2022 EB5 and when it reached Earth's atmosphere. The asteroid is only the fifth one to have been detected before impact. CNET reports: Astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky first spotted the asteroid on March 11 with a telescope at the Piszkesteto observatory in Hungary. He reported the sighting to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which tracks near-Earth objects and comets. News of the asteroid spread from there, and calculations showed the space rock had a 100% chance of impact north of Iceland. Fortunately, the asteroid was very small, roughly 1 meter (3.3 feet) in diameter -- that's half the height of basketball superstar Michael Jordan. An asteroid that small will safely burn up in our planet's atmosphere, but the dainty size also makes it hard to spot.
The thought of an asteroid discovery mere hours before reaching us might make you think "yikes," but the European Space Agency described the news as "rather positive." Researchers have done an excellent job tracking bigger asteroids, so it's impressive they're now finding some of the smaller, sneakier ones. "All five asteroids, spotted before impact, were found since 2008, illustrating how much asteroid observation technologies have improved in the last years," ESA said in a statement. While 2022 EB5 was relatively tiny, infrasound detectors picked up on the likely impact, which ESA said suggested an energy release equivalent to a magnitude 4.0 earthquake. As detection systems get more sophisticated, it might be possible to warn communities when a small asteroid is inbound.
The thought of an asteroid discovery mere hours before reaching us might make you think "yikes," but the European Space Agency described the news as "rather positive." Researchers have done an excellent job tracking bigger asteroids, so it's impressive they're now finding some of the smaller, sneakier ones. "All five asteroids, spotted before impact, were found since 2008, illustrating how much asteroid observation technologies have improved in the last years," ESA said in a statement. While 2022 EB5 was relatively tiny, infrasound detectors picked up on the likely impact, which ESA said suggested an energy release equivalent to a magnitude 4.0 earthquake. As detection systems get more sophisticated, it might be possible to warn communities when a small asteroid is inbound.
So? (Score:3)
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Even If it was the big one, 2 hours or 2 months, we still can't do anything about it. Not in real life, only in movies.
The bigger it is, the more time we will have.
If it is big enough to be an ELE, we will have many months or even years of notice.
A 100-meter diameter asteroid can be blown apart with a nuke. An American W88 thermonuclear warhead [wikipedia.org] has a mass of 175 kilograms (about two Michael Jordans) and a yield of 475-Kilotons (about 30 Hiroshima). That is enough to deflect a 1 km asteroid by several degrees, missing the earth entirely even a few weeks out.
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You'd think we'd like to test that theory sometimes.
Re:So? (Score:4, Informative)
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The bigger one could be traveling at millions of times the velocity of the smaller one,
The biggest risk, by far, is from near-earth objects [wikipedia.org]. They are mostly in co-planar orbits with earth, and almost none are in retrograde orbits. So their velocities are predictable.
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In space area has nothing to do with velocity. The bigger one could be traveling at millions of times the velocity of the smaller one,
I love how you manage to contradict yourself within two sentences. First you rightly point out that bodies of vastly different masses/sizes can travel along a single trajectory (because in astrodynamics, trajectories are implied by integrating the initial velocity vector, where mass doesn't even come into play unless the body is so heavy as for itself to affect the dominant object in the system -- the Sun, in this case). But then you say that larger Solar system bodies are somehow magically much faster -- w
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That point isn't particularly helpful however (unless we are able to use velocity and its disruption to aid us in early detect
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Way to miss the point. The bigger it is the easier it is to detect from farther away. The GP wasn't making a statement about size and speed.
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Perhaps you should do the math on that :P
A typical warhead has not even a clock accurate enough to set it of at the right spot.
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A W88 has millisecond detonation accuracy. For a delta-V of 10 km/sec that puts it within 10 meters of the target spot.
A single W88 can deflect a PHO [wikipedia.org] up to 1 km in diameter.
A SpaceX StarShip can carry a hundred of them.
We can handle this.
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You forget the Asteroid, it has a delta-v of 30km/s to 40km/s, so it adds up to 40km/s to 50km/s
In other words: it is damn hard to hit it.
A SpaceX StarShip can carry a hundred of them.
Lol, you are just silly.
Warheads, yes. but not missiles to launch them ...
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If far enough, even an explosion at a bit of a distance will slow the asteroid enough to be "late" for an Earth impact.
Earth "clears" its (orbital around the Sun) position in some 424 seconds. If the asteroid is "delayed" by 7 minutes, then the impact is averted.
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Yes. So far the theory.
Now, in how many scenarios will we be able to see the asteroid early enough and send a nuke to delay it 7mins in the end?
How many nukes do you need to do that? Nuke sounds os fancy. So many kilo tons. Hint: you are not moving several 1000 kilotons of real rock with a nuke that is the equivalent of 30,000 kilo tons TNT. Those kilo tons have complete different meaning :P
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A typical warhead has not even a clock accurate enough to set it of at the right spot.
Uh...warheads are reliant on nanosecond-scale timing of detonations. Detonating a warhead at just the right time is hardly the issue. Even more importantly, the optimal asteroid-deflecting nuke will work just like a bunker buster. Those exist, and apparently don't have any problems with timing either.
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Uh...warheads are reliant on nanosecond-scale timing of detonations.
No they are not. Hence they do not have nano second accurate clocks. Especially as those did not exist in the 1950s - 1970s.
A warhead reenters earth atmosphere with about 8000km/h. That is 2222 m/s (nice coincidence). If you want to explode in a 50m distance of your best spot, you need a clock doing something like 50Hz.
An asteroid is coming at you with 30.000 to 40.000 km/h. That needs ms reliability to detonate. 1km in front of it or 1km
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Even more importantly, the optimal asteroid-deflecting nuke will work just like a bunker buster. Those exist, and apparently don't have any problems with timing either.
A bunker buster hits the bunker and is detonated on impact (with possible delay).
A nuke is supposed to explode outside ...
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I find it both appealing and strangely comforting that we're using this new unit of measurement, "Michael Jordans" to describe asteroids and nukes. So, how many "Michael Jordans" is an ELE-sized asteroid? And if "Michael Jordans" are being used for size, what are we using for mass?
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Oh - we use him for both?
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You're forgetting that humanity has a secret weapon... Elon Musk! If he detected the asteroid, he declare war against it on Twitter and try to blow it up with his Starship prototype.
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2 months isn't a lot of time, but I think I could pay off my credit cards by then.
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WTF (Score:1)
Re: WTF (Score:2)
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I vote we use Bruce Willis to measure asteroids.
Re: WTF (Score:2)
Only if we can measure the amount of energy to deflect the asteroid in "Chuck Norris"s
Re: WTF (Score:2)
Honestly this has shattered my image of him, I thought he was much taller than two asteroids stacked ontop of eachother.
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A new standard of measurement!
The Michael Jordan.
Although more study needs to be done to correlate it to Rode Islands and Libraries of Congress.
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So 1/91th of a football field? I think I got it. thanks!
They have to bury the lead here. (Score:2)
Waiting halfway through to report that the asteroid was tiny (1 meter).
Detecting something that tiny at anything other than point blank range is a testament to how tight the net is around our planet.
Something bigger, say, like a car or a box truck, would likely have been detected further in advance.
Sure, a meter of rock falling right onto your head at stellar speeds would suck, mightily.
Whereas a Buick making landfall at those speeds would be a local catastrophe.
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Errr. . .the point of the article is spotting something of that size before it hit.
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Estimates are that about 100 tons of asteroid material enter the Earth's atmosphere per day. Mostly they're about the size of a grain of sand, although asteroids the size of pebbles enter the atmosphere every day.
Asteroids of this size fall on the Earth a couple times a year.
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Depends on when you were born. Lede didn't become the defacto preferred form until about 15 years ago, if you're over 50 then there was a point in your life when it wasn't even a word.
If copy writers can invent a word and replace a common word with it then I think we can probably continue to use the old form from to time.
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At the time I was born it was "bury the lead" and "lede wasn't even a term".
Space telescopes (Score:2)
Shouldn't we be sending up wide field space telescopes to watch for these things?
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Shouldn't we be sending up wide field space telescopes to watch for these things?
No. Ground-based 'scopes are good enough for asteroid detection.
Even a backyard scope is adequate. Many NEOs are regularly plotted by amateurs.
Re: Space telescopes (Score:2)
Oh yeah? Then how is it that tens of thousands of these were discovered by the NEOWISE space telescope rather than ground observation? And why does NASA keep extending the NEOWISE space telescopeâ(TM)s asteroid hunting mission even though it was not even built for asteroid hunting. References:
https://news.arizona.edu/story... [arizona.edu] https://scitechdaily.com/nasas... [scitechdaily.com]
You might get Bruce Willis on call within 2 hours. (Score:2)
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That would make for a funny SNL spoof, Bruce Willis looking for his walker in order to save the world.
Michael Jordan a standard measure of length now? (Score:4, Funny)
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Kids today probably don't know who Michael Jordan is. Is he that black singer from the 1980s?
(Not that I do either... other than there's a brand of shoes with his name on them)
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Michael Jackson was black?! I'd just assumed the Jackson family had adopted him.
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He played in a Bugs Bunny movie
Re: Michael Jordan a standard measure of length no (Score:2)
Didn't the remake that movie and use different basketball stars?
Re: Michael Jordan a standard measure of length no (Score:2)
I asked my daughter (8 yrs old) if she knew who Michael Jordan is, and she said "yeah he's the guy from Space Jam!" Then I asked her if she had ever seen Space Jam, and she said no. So now I'm even more confused...
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I asked my daughter (8 yrs old) if she knew who Michael Jordan is, and she said "yeah he's the guy from Space Jam!" Then I asked her if she had ever seen Space Jam, and she said no. So now I'm even more confused...
The new Space Jam references the old Space Jam. There's even a part where they look for Michael Jordan, but end up with actor Michael B Jordan instead.
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It's better than giraffe. At least they brought up good but long forgotten basketball player.
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US of A - using obscure measurements since 17th century :D
It's better than giraffe. At least they brought up good but long forgotten basketball player.
You may wish to double check your dates. The USA declared independence from Britain in 1776 - the last quart of the 18th century. It is also worth noting that the USA used the measurements of Britain at that time. In 1795, France became the first country to adopt the metric system (in 1840 the French government mandated conversion to metric). In 1866, the US congress authorized the use of the metric system. 1875 saw the Treaty of the Meter, standardizing the metric units. In 1957 the US military adopted the
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US of A - using obscure measurements since 17th century :D
It's better than giraffe. At least they brought up good but long forgotten basketball player.
You may wish to double check your dates. The USA declared independence from Britain in 1776 - the last quart of the 18th century. It is also worth noting that the USA used the measurements of Britain at that time. In 1795, France became the first country to adopt the metric system (in 1840 the French government mandated conversion to metric). In 1866, the US congress authorized the use of the metric system. 1875 saw the Treaty of the Meter, standardizing the metric units. In 1957 the US military adopted the metric system for weapons and equipment. The UK began adopting the metric system in 1965. Most countries in the world had adopted (or had plans to adopt) the metric system in the 1970s. Based on this timeline, I'd say the measurements used by the US started to become obscure in the 20th century - some 300 years later than you claimed. For what it's worth, many Brits still recognize our units of measure.
Beyond this, the Imperial system was codified in 1824 by the British parliament. This is the reason why the UK gallons and pints are different to US gallons and pints. Before the weights and measures act of 1824, there were quite a few different measurements for "gallon". The US kept using the Queen Anne gallon (A.K.A. the Wine Gallon) where as the UK settled on 10 pounds of water as the measurement of a gallon.
US (US Customary System):
Gallon = 3.78 L
Pint = 473 ml
Imperial:
Gallon = 4.54 L
Pint = 568
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In North America's defense, there were multiple gallons used in the British Empire when the Americans adopted their gallon.
I frequently have to convert units for my wife. Between the measuring cup that came with the dog's food supplements to fl ounces (florida ounces) and then back into cups.
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Well I for one welcome our new basketball-playing SI unit!
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For any practical layman purpose: a meter is a yard. Simple.
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In red states, using the term "meters" is a call for action against the infiltration of European socialism into our public schools. The reasoning goes, "they use meters in Europe. Aha!! They are after our feet and yards and we must put a stop to it before education breaks out."
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How many Michael Jordan's are in an Olympic-size swimming pool?
And how many Michael Jordans fit into a Library of Congress?
Re: Michael Jordan a standard measure of length no (Score:2)
As the height of Michael Jordan is now a standard unit (MJo's?), here are the conversions to other common units:
20 hands
0.01 furlongs
1.1 fathoms
0.00036 leagues
0.02 football fields
6.6 light-nanoseconds
And for our server rack friends out there: 46U
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For further perspective, one meter is also about half the height of US Football star Tom Brady. https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
For those of you who don't follow basketball, maybe this will help clarify just how big one meter is.
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The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
(And my house is four and a half Michael Jordans tall for those wondering.)
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660 ft per 52 gal? What are you driving, a cruise ship?
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Am I the only one who read "1 meter (3.3 feet) in diameter -- that's half the height of basketball superstar Michael Jordan" and thought WTF? Look I realise that the USA is not big on SI units but do we really need to tell people how big a meter is and use Michael Jordan as a reference? Really? Couldn't they just say "about 1 yard", or just left it at 3.3 feet?
As much as I think the US needs to start using big boy units (SI or at least metric), not everyone knows what a metre is. Those who don't work or live with these units every day can use a bit of a guide and it's a very good writing habit to have. Most people who work in metric have no idea how much a pint is, or even most Americans (A British pint is 668 ml). Hence when I get a beer in Europe, it's usually 500 ml.
3 ft 3 in or 3.3 ft? (Score:2)
The death of journalism (Score:2)
The Cnet article introduced the "Michael Jordan" bit. WTF kind of journalist would write something like that? Completely irrelevant, not even helpful as a visualization measure, since "1 meter" or "3.3 feet" are both measurements that people will understand.
I know there are a lot of crappy journalists out there - there always have been. It used to be that publications employed editors, to ensure some minimal level of quality. This is obviously no longer the case...
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Yeah, it's almost like /. editors moved up the career ladder all the way to Cnet...
Re: The death of journalism (Score:2)
Surely measurement uncertainty was great enough it doesn't matter if you write 1 yard, 1 meter or 2 feet?
I'm confused... (Score:1)
..unfamiliar with a "Jordan". Can you convert that into standard "Lewis Hamilton" units please ?
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stop with the drama (Score:1)
It was two meters
Move along, nothing to watch here
Lead Time (Score:3)
On the other hand, an ELE impactor is large enough that we'll probably have months to years of warning. Maybe just enough time to do something to save our asses. More likely, it'll be just enough time for selfish, ignorant, cynical shitheads to mess it up for everyone.
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Its stuff like this (Score:2)
That makes me think Winchell Chung is massively over estimating how easy it will be to detect spacecraft in the future. He claims "stealth" in space is impossible because there is nowhere to hide. Yet we can't even find asteroids until they have almost hit us.
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That makes me think Winchell Chung is massively over estimating how easy it will be to detect spacecraft in the future. He claims "stealth" in space is impossible because there is nowhere to hide. Yet we can't even find asteroids until they have almost hit us.
Because we aren't really trying still. A spacefaring civilization which needs to track multiple ships traversing the solar system on a regular basis can and will build an orbital phased array radar at kilometer scale at a convenient location, like Earth-Sun L4 or L5 and track every pebble out to Saturn. This isn't some exotic theoretical possibility, either. We already know how to do on-orbit assembly of non-trivial structures. ISS is proof of that. We've known how to build phased array radars since WW
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He is correct in theory that anything can be detected. However reality is often much messier than math implies. Phased array radars are not a panacea. If they were then an AWACs would effectively be omniscient on the battlefield. They are good but they aren't that good. High powered radars have been aimed at space for a long time now and they have no instantly revealed every near earth object. Having more of them running more often will certainly help but is isnt a silver bullet. Radars are expensive, requi
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Phased array radars are not a panacea. If they were then an AWACs would effectively be omniscient on the battlefield.
They might be, but so far no one but Australia is flying the E-7A. Everyone else in the Western world still flies the E-3. At present, every E-3 AWACS in the world uses a Northrop Grumman AN/APY-1/2 AWACS radar in a rotodome. It's a traditional mechanically rotating transceiver, not an actively electronically steered array. USAF has ambitions to field AESA (or more specifically a multirole electronically scanned array (MESA)) but those are still only deployed by Australia. Boeing was making the mechani
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They might be, but so far no one but Australia is flying the E-7A. Everyone else in the Western world still flies the E-3. At present, every E-3 AWACS in the world uses a Northrop Grumman AN/APY-1/2 AWACS radar in a rotodome.
I know what E-3 and E-7 are. Switching to AESA improves performance but it does not make you omniscient.
Yes of course. It's been the remit of Space Command for generations now to operate those radars. They are specifically designed and aimed at detecting and tracking solely LEO objects, so naturally they're bad at finding near Earth objects. They're even quite bad at tracking out to GEO, which is why Space Command is asking for money to build new radars specifically to deal with an anticipated sudden jump in cis-Lunar traffic when Starship is completed and Artemis flights begin and when China establishes their Lunar base. Basically what Space Command has today are ICBM trackers and that's all. They are incidentally useful in detecting the other random crap in low orbit, but they're not good for looking at the solar system. There's a reason why astronomers were using Arecibo for that and not the amusingly ambitiously named Space Surveillance Network (for very small values of 'space').
Part of Wenchell's argument is that because there is no weather or atmosphere in space, radar and other sensors will work at much longer ranges than they otherwise would. You do a fine job of illustrating that isn't necessarily the case. You don't have to worry about the horizon problem anymore, which does improve performance. But a SPY-6 sized radar isn't going to give you target data out to Jupiter.
Yes, and the radar I'm talking about to make Winchell Chung's observation a reality is all of that multiplied by $BIGNUM. I'm talking about an orbital array powered by a dedicated nuclear reactor, with a radiator array sitting behind it (or possibly between its elements; there are sun shield considerations) that's basically as big as the radar array itself. It will be phased array because it will be too big to be swinging the thing around all the time, even in orbit, regardless of the performance advantages of phased array (which are apparently considerable; exactly how advantageous is classified). I reiterate, we are not tracking every pebble in the inner solar system because we aren't even trying. Because it's expensive. It's doable, but it's 'astronomically' expensive. (Har har.) Once we are tracking every pebble, everything that's not a pebble in the catalog is easy to see, even if it only has the apparent radar cross section of another pebble.
What
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I know what E-3 and E-7 are.
I figured, but decided to go into a little more detail for other readers.
Part of Wenchell's argument is that because there is no weather or atmosphere in space, radar and other sensors will work at much longer ranges than they otherwise would. You do a fine job of illustrating that isn't necessarily the case.
Atmosphere and weather do indeed degrade the performance of the Space Surveillance Network, but yeah, the inverse square law is a bitch.
What you describe is less a radar and more a microwave based directed energy weapon at that point.
At close range, indeed it would be. It doesn't take a very big radar to be a weapon though. The radar on board some Migs is notoriously powerful. "Capable of frying a rabbit on the runway" I believe is how they've been characterized. Space Force would probably have to be careful to avoid aiming a f
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I don't actually know who Winchell Chung is. I'm basing the scale of the installation on papers from the '70s.
Oh man! You are in luck, his website is an absolute goldmine for these kinds of things. http://www.projectrho.com/publ... [projectrho.com]
The site's main focus is spacecraft propulsion and what systems are theoretically possible. Its math heavy but he goes to lengths to make cheat sheets that help speed up calculations. He touches on a lot of potential Sci-Fi topics though. In all its meant to be a technical aide to aspiring Sci-Fi authors who want to give their works a dose a realism instead of just handwaving FTL this or
Pretty amazing that it was spotted at all (Score:2)
This was a rock, hurtling towards the earth at thousands of mph, just 3 feet across. And, the earth is surrounded by tens of thousands of satellites, many of them even bigger than that rock. It's really impressive that this needle in a haystack was found at all!
2 hours means it was small (Score:2)
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Half a Giraffe (Score:1)