Stealth Asteroid Misses Earth

Paradoxish writes: "Gah. According to cnn.com an asteroid hiding in an astronomical blindspot nearly blindsided Earth. The scary part is that scientists didn't notice it until four days AFTER it passed by. Apparently, it would've been similiar to the Tunguska explosion. Scary." As long as they keep missing Earth, we're OK.

Comments

Actually...

[gergi]

The asteroid was installed with a propulsion system and aimed at New Jersey. Unfortunately, due to a conversion factor from metric units, the asteroid missed Earth completely.

Calculations

[nucal]

But don't tell the grandchildren to head to the hills just yet. The odds of a collision are currently 1 in 10 million and could become even more remote with more refined calculations.

If we could just get the calculations more refined, then the asteroids will never hit us.

Oh god no!, NOT the earth...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is where I keep all my stuff....

I Need My Meds Now

[nickynicky9doors]

Get the editors off the Crack and into detox... You're frickn scar'n me.

Ice Shelf Collapses

Resident Evil

Child Porn

Killer Asteroids

Are these really near misses?

[Performer Guy]

OK time for some back of the envelope math to counter the hysteria.

461,000 kilometers was the distance it missed by. The projected target area of that circle is PI*R^2 or about 667 billion square kilometers.

Radius of the Earth is around 6360 kilometers give or take. Projected target area of the Earth is therefore about 0.12 billion square kilometers. So the probability this class of object would collide with teh earth is roughly .12/667 or around 1/5600. Then IF it hit it would be more likely to do no damage than not depending on the impact zone.

Of course they don't just count objects inside the 1.2X distance to the moon, range when they scream "near miss". Inside the moon, beyond the moon, they all count for the headlines.

Excuse me for not losing any sleep.

Re:Thanks for picking on us, CNN...

[david duncan scott]

OK:

"If it were over a populated area, like Baghdad, it would have basically flattened it," said Gareth Williams, associate director of the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center in Boston, Massachusetts, "but our calculations show that one fragment, about the size of a grapefruit, would hit Blackwulf square in the face, killing him instantly"

Better?

Torino Scale (used to classify collision threats)

[volpone]

If you're interested, check out nasa.gov's description of the Torino Scale , the method in which the scientific community classifies an object's likelihood of striking and damaging the Earth.

The rating goes from zero (the object is certain to miss the Earth) to ten (the nasty asteroid thingy is definitely going to "cause a global climatic catastrophe"). Read it, it's very unsettling...

Does anyone know what Torino rating this most recent near-miss was?

Came from the direction of the sun?

[guttentag]

The space boulder passed Earth within 288,000 miles (461,000 kilometers) -- or 1.2 times the distance to the moon -- on March 8, but since it came from the direction of the sun, scientists did not observe it until four days later.

In other news, President Bush has declared the sun to be part of "the axis of evil."

"My advisors have just informed me that the sun has been hurling dangerous, radiation death rays at the United States and its friends for millenia. And they have a 'solar flare' weapon they use to disrupt our electronics."

"Mark my words. We will smoke them out of their holes and wipe them off the face of the planet," Bush stated, before a reporter pointed out that the sun is not on Earth. "It don't make no difference -- don't interrupt me with the politics of details, son. We're still going to hunt them down and put a stop to them."

The president refused to answer questions about whether he plans to detain the sun in Cuba.

Re:Calculations

[Tosta Dojen]

This is like asking what number would have hit a dart player who missed.

I dunno... I once saw an 8 come down off the board and start beating the crap out of a dart player who missed his shot entirely. The dude was slightly drunk, too, so the 8 was really trashing him before the rest of us got them apart. Of course, the 17 is pretty irritable too -- I wouldn't be surprised if one of them ever gave somebody a smack in the head.