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Closest Asteroid Yet Flies Past Earth
lmcl writes "New Scientist reports that an asteroid about the size of a small house passed just 88,000 kilometres from the Earth by on Saturday 27 September - the closest approach of a natural object ever recorded. Geostationary communication satellites circle the Earth 42,000km from the planet's centre. The asteroid, designated 2003 SQ222, came from inside the Earth's orbit and so was only spotted after it had whizzed by."
I thought I felt something.
should have got my giant shotgun out to try and shoot it. Next time.
-Tim Louden
She said "did you just feel the earth move?" - I thought I was good in bed.
But it was just an asteroid.
The previous record for closest approach of an asteroid - 108,000km measured from the centre of the Earth - was set in 1994 by another 10m object named 1994 XM1.
I heard the record for the closest approach of an asteroid was already set billions of years ago. Apparantly everything died or some freak catastrophe like that. Doesn't that still hold the world record?
actually it was a small house, mine. thats right I lived in space...or at least I used to.
Er-Um-I don't think so. Plenty of Asteroids have struck the Earth, and those are the degenerate case of "closest".
Did you really mean "Closest Asteroid of Significant Size since Hollywood Made Some Movies Recently About Asteroids Hitting the Earth and Wiping Out Humanity Yet Flies Past Earth"?
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How else would I know when to begin the rabid orgy of drinking, sex, and general debauchery?
I like to think that they'll figure a few dinosaurs did survive and lived in grand buildings as the rulers of all mankind.
Brick Top: You're always gonna have problems moving an asteroid in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut it up into six pieces and pile it all together.
Sol: Would someone mind telling me, who are you?
Brick Top: And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in deep space for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up asteroid will look like curry to a pisshead. You need at least sixteen hundred pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through an asteroid that weighs 10 tons in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked asteroid every minute. Hence the expression, 'as greedy as a pig.'
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd