Close encounters of the asteroid kind on Tuesday. Asteroid 2005 YU 55 a near earth miss. When will a large asteroid or comet hit the earth?
Jimbo
2011/11/06 12:08:36
A huge asteroid 400 meters in diameter will come closer to the earth than the moon on Tuesday. High resolution radar surface composite within 4 meters showing surface features are expected to be taken by Arecibo radar. High resolution photos with 7.5 meters too. The next close encounter they know of is in 2028.
The earth has been hit in the past. The Levi comet hit Jupiter recently with spectacular photos. We will be hit again someday. When?
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news171.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-space-asteroid-i...
The earth has been hit in the past. The Levi comet hit Jupiter recently with spectacular photos. We will be hit again someday. When?
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news171.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-space-asteroid-i...
NASA actually has an effective program to identify and track asteroids that have the potential to hit the earth. I'm not too worried.
But there will always be a chance that some odd-ball rock in some odd orbit "comes out of nowhere" and visually stays near the sun as it approaches so we might never see it until there's only maybe a couple of days notice.
Personally, each of us is at far greater risk of dying of some freak stroke or accident, but the scenario makes for good fiction, and possibly makes for some justification for some doomsday bunkers to be provisioned by the government.
P.S. Why to we say "the earth". We don't say "the Mars".
Spacewatch is an important step, but we have more than this to be leery of however. In 2002, a ten meter object entered over the Mediterranean sea releasing three times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. Events like this are believed to occur every 13 years on average, and only the fact that most explode high in the atmosphere prevents their being a major impediment to civilization.
In 2008, a slightly smaller asteroid stuck northern Sudan only hours after it was spotted. A slightly larger asteroid exploded over Indonesia in October of 2009, and was not detected prior.
In 2004, asteroid 2004FH passed by the earth only hours after discovery, and would have released energy equivalent to a small hydrogen bomb. A similar asteroid (2009DD45) passed by twice geostationary orbit three days aft...
Spacewatch is an important step, but we have more than this to be leery of however. In 2002, a ten meter object entered over the Mediterranean sea releasing three times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. Events like this are believed to occur every 13 years on average, and only the fact that most explode high in the atmosphere prevents their being a major impediment to civilization.
In 2008, a slightly smaller asteroid stuck northern Sudan only hours after it was spotted. A slightly larger asteroid exploded over Indonesia in October of 2009, and was not detected prior.
In 2004, asteroid 2004FH passed by the earth only hours after discovery, and would have released energy equivalent to a small hydrogen bomb. A similar asteroid (2009DD45) passed by twice geostationary orbit three days after discovery. The 15 meter 2010 AL30 passed by half the distance to the moon three days after discovery in January of 2010.
Now for clarity, let me emphasize that none of these encounters was at all dangerous. But it illustrates that there is a huge gulf between the ten kilometer objects congress has asked NASA to detect and they flurry of smaller, but potentially destructive objects that are out there. 1 a kilometer object could produce an airburst large enough to destroy a city if it occured near the ground, and it is very unlikely that we would detect it more than a week out. We can, and must, do better.