Earth's 'Mini Moon' May Have Been a Chunk of Our Actual Moon (apnews.com) 32
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.
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? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
/. 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
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Re: What the fuck is this? (Score:1)
I'm on Linux too (Zorin). No idea why you're having problems then.
Re:What the fuck is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude, I'm on Linux. I don't have any malware on my machine.
Hahahahahahahahaha....
Aaaaaaa... .HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Good one.
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Re: What the fuck is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot is entitled to some ad money too.
no, fuck the whole system (Score:2)
Nobody is getting paid as long as my personal information is being traded.
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Showing you ads doesn't necessarily involve trading your personal information.
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Showing you ads doesn't necessarily involve trading your personal information.
It can, and since the injection method uses javascript (which we know because you can block it with noscript, I didn't have to make any changes to my config not to see these new ads) it probably does. An ad blocker is a necessary defensive tool. I don't want random jerkoffs running code in my browser.
It is possible for an ad network to function with no client side javascript at all, but that takes work, and I guess thankfully none is being employed here.
Re: no, fuck the whole system (Score:2)
sorry youtube, I don't see ads or sponsor segments (Score:2)
Sure. And I've checked out of the whole system of Internet marketing because of this and several other instances of abuse. I'm not participating in it when I can avoid it. Even if that means I'm now labeled an evil anti-capitalist.
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It's your right to not participate in the monetization of Internet, of course. But by visiting Slashdot, you willingly choose to not exercise that right of yours.
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Don't tell me what I choose or don't choose to exercise. I still block ads and I am under no legal obligation to lift my ad blockers.
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I am under no legal obligation to lift my ad blockers.
I never said otherwise. Turn on your ad blocker and get rid of the Slashdot ads.
Money (Score:3)
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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.
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Try alterslash.org?
not to return until 2055 (Score:2)
So what happens in 2055?
Re:not to return until 2055 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
That's no moon....
what is gravity? (Score:1)
Re:what is gravity? (Score:4, Informative)
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 to orbit it.
And even Newton figured out (the old apple-on-head story) is that yeah, Earth is attracting the apple, but it's also vice versa, it's just that Earth is significantly heavier. Moon does not actually orbit Earth, Earth and Moon orbit their center of gravity (which happens to be inside Earth).
Anyway, the curvature of space is the best guess at this time, and that explanation seems to be accurate (since there are things like gravity waves that have been detected).
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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
Not a horseshoe orbit, unfortunately (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately it's not in a horseshoe orbit, which would be cool. It's just randomly passing by, instead.
Horseshoe orbits are semi-stable orbits that have a small object orbiting inside the orbit of a larger object. Since it's moving faster it eventually catches up to the larger object, whose gravity then slingshots it into a wider and thus slower orbit. Now the larger object is moving faster so it eventually catches up to the smaller one, and this time its gravity slows the smaller one down and it drops back into the smaller, faster orbit again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Earth has about a dozen objects in horseshoe orbits, but all of them are extremely small and none approach closely enough to be useful.
If you believe anything Sitchin's says (Score:1)
In our Ancient past, interpreted from Sumerian writing (not as first hand witnesses, but ancient stories passed down to them) a Moon of the planet Nibiru, had a glancing collision with earth, it could also come from that - if we want to start guessing about its origin.