Earth's 'Mini Moon' May Have Been a Chunk of Our Actual Moon

An asteroid named 2024 PT5, recently exhibiting "mini moon" behavior around Earth, may have been a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid," reports the Associated Press. The 33-foot space rock is expected to pass safely near Earth in January, when it will be closely observed. From the report: While not technically a moon -- NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth's gravity and fully in orbit -- it's "an interesting object" worthy of study. The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid's "mini moon behavior," Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.

Currently more than 2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers) away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That's almost five times farther than the moon. [...] NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California's Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network.

What the fuck is this?

[stwrtpj]

I load Slashdot, and suddenly I have all these goddamn ads despite having AdBlock Plus enabled. I had my wife try to load the site, as she has uBlock Origin and she was seeing the fucking ads, too.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

/. has ads? I never had a problem blocking them, set it up once and never really had to do anything. Even just using a hosts file seems to knock out the annoying images and animated banners. I started blocking everything the moment that ads based on my amazon browsing history started showing up. That was way too fucked up for me to put up with ads any longer.

Maybe you have some malware that's loading ads on top of what you're already seeing? I think uBlock has some configuration to pull from blocking lists

Re:

[stwrtpj]

Dude, I'm on Linux. I don't have any malware on my machine. If you look at the previous Slashdot article, you'll see other people having the same problem. Also I had my wife check this on a completely separate computer (ALSO running Linux) and got the same result.

Re: What the fuck is this?

[OrangeTide]

I'm on Linux too (Zorin). No idea why you're having problems then.

Re:

[bleedingobvious]

Dude, I'm on Linux. I don't have any malware on my machine.

Hahahahahahahahaha....

Aaaaaaa... .HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Good one.

Re:

[Senshi]

Ad block plus is old, most have move on to ublock origin and private badger. Some ad blocking apps give you 30 days free trial then you have to pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re: What the fuck is this?

[vbdasc]

Slashdot is entitled to some ad money too.

no, fuck the whole system

[OrangeTide]

Nobody is getting paid as long as my personal information is being traded.

Re:

[vbdasc]

Showing you ads doesn't necessarily involve trading your personal information.

Re: no, fuck the whole system

[LindleyF]

It's probably your cookies. Amazon doesn't need to sell your browsing history for those ads to follow you.

Money

[buck-yar]

In the 90s and early 00s people made web pages for the fun of it and giving back to the community. Things haven't been the same since broad monetization.

Re:

[vbdasc]

There are still web pages made for the fun of it. Concerning Slashdot, it served ads in the 90s and 00s, as far as I can remember.

not to return until 2055

[rossdee]

So what happens in 2055?

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

So what happens in 2055?

It will pass within a few million kilometers of Earth with a probability of less than 0.001% of impact.

It's 10 meters in diameter with a mass of about 1500 tonnes.

For comparison, the Chelyabinsk meteor was about 10,000 tonnes.

TL;DR: This isn't something you need to worry about.

Obligatory

[dohzer]

That's no moon....

what is gravity?

[buck-yar]

Can someone explain why this asteroid, and any planet/moon/star etc orbit instead of just flying straight through space? Magnets only work over a short distance, why does gravity affect things so far away? And why does more mass = more gravity? A pool ball doesn't go into orbit around the ball its hit towards. I asked AI but it gave circular logic basically restating my question and not answering why.

Re:

[Zarhan]

Well, to best of our knowledge, the effect we see as gravity is mass of objects causing curvature in space.

The old analog is the bowling ball on bedsheet. Push a marble near the bowling ball and it no longer follows a straight line. Instead, it's trajectory got altered by the dimple. Continuing the analogy further, a black hole is a case where there is a hole at the bottom of the bend and stuff can fall straight through if they hit the center. But of course, if you stay far enough, it's still quite possible

Re:

[vbdasc]

Can someone explain why this asteroid, and any planet/moon/star etc orbit instead of just flying straight through space?

An object can still fly straight through space relatively unperturbed, if its velocity is high enough. If not, then it's caught in some other object(s)' gravity well, and is orbiting.

Magnets only work over a short distance, why does gravity affect things so far away?

Magnetic forces' range, just like gravitational forces' range, is the entire universe. You might think that their range is finite, because both these forces weaken with distance.

However, electromagnetic forces (unlike gravitation) exerted by different bodies can be both positive and negative, and over a large distance they stat