A Rock Moves In Space

theBrownfury writes: "The BBC is reporting here that a very large Earth collision course asteroid has been discovered. This asteroid, NT7, was first observed on July 5th and current data suggests an impact date of February 1st, 2019. NT7 is 2kms wide and on date of impact will be approaching Earth at 28km/s. An asteroid of this size is large enough to cause continent wide destruction. However astronomers are still cautious in reporting this asteroid as the orbit of NT7 has not been fully verified. Current data on NT7's orbit suggests it orbits the Sun every 837 days and travels in a tilted orbit from about the distance of Mars to just within the Earth's orbit." The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.

Comments

Re:Don't laugh yet.. :(

[yobbo]

Give us a fucking break! Do you expect that our nation of 19.7 million people be responsibile for the whole southern hemisphere? What do you think we'd do even if we did spot something out there? Put it in mandatory detention?!

Re:Don't laugh yet.. :(

[sdo1]

Specifically I'm talking about the Australian govt who a while back cut all funds to asteroid search programs, virtually leaving the entire southern hemisphere unchecked for such potential threats.

Would anyone actually notice if the southern hemisphere went away?

-S

Re:Don't laugh yet.. :(

[anshil]

A lot of evidence points to asteroid impact likely being the biggest actual threat to mankind

Oh come on, what for evidence? Compared to other threats? I say there are dozends dangers far more likely, and which need a lot more attendance for now than stupid astroids. They didn't kill mankind for 10.000 years, so they most likely will not do in the next 100 one. I don't say there never will be something large looking into our direction, but take it easy guys, and additionally asteroids is not the only astronomical accident that may happen, there are far more, just not spectaluar enough to make movies from. How about a supernova in our quater of the galaxy? We will be ripped away. How about things that we don't even know about? Or a strong neurino star far far away, pointing it's north pole exactly on erath for a while? We will radiated to nothingness. Who says the whole univese is not suddendly slipping into a hole of some kind of superuniverse we don't even have an idea of today? (and stops to exist as whole?) Just calm down.

However what about global earth warming? Oil resources? Malaria? The pest coming back? Wars in near east, American Nations believing they a are the gloval polica and can let do whatever they want. etc. etc.