120,000 km Is Still Too Close

texchanchan writes: "BBC report: '...on 14 June, an asteroid (maybe as big as 120 meters in diameter)... made one of the closest-ever recorded approaches to the Earth. ..' but was only discovered three days later. This is well within the moon's orbit. 'If 2002MN had hit the Earth, it would have caused local devastation similar to that which occurred in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908...'"

Comments

Re:U.S. Govt

[BranMan]

In all fairness, the article states that the path of the asteroid was on a line with the sun. There is no way Earth based telescopes could have seen it, even had they known exactly where to look.

This will become more scary in the future, when there is some capability to deal with an asteroid on a collision course. When we get to that point, we'll be complacent and will eventually end up being sucker-punched by one of these asteroids coming "out of the sun".

Re:But actually its still a small problem...

[bravehamster]

I'm going to be worrying a lot more about travelling on the highway than I am about asteroid collisions.

Yeah, but if you crash on the highway, you and your kids might die. If an asteroid hits the earth, millions or billions could die. So on a personal level, driving is more dangerous, but we're talking about the survival of the species here. It's not something to ignore.