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Small Asteroid On Collision Course With Earth
musatov writes "There's talk on The Minor Planet Mailing List about a small asteroid approaching Earth with a 99.8% probability of colliding. The entrance to the Earth's atmosphere will take place October 7 at 0246 UTC (2:35 after this story goes live) over northern Sudan, releasing the energy of about a kiloton of TNT. The asteroid is assumed to be 3-4 meters in size; it is expected to burn up completely in the atmosphere, causing no harm. As a powerful bolide, it may put on quite a show in the sky. For those advanced enough in astronomy to observe, check the MPEC 2008-T50 and MPEC 2008-T64 circulars. NASA's JPL Small Body Database has a 3D orbit view. The story has been already picked up by CNN and NASA."
Small asteroids that burn up in the upper atmosphere are far from uncommon. Why is this suddenly notable?
Would it matter?
More likely they'll think it's a divine sigh that they're doing everything fine.
Objects of this size would be expected to enter the Earth's atmosphere every few months on average but this is the first time such an event has been predicted ahead of time.
This detail got left out of the story summary, making this sound like a bigger deal than it actually is. This is a routine, mundane event — only the prediction is newsworthy.
Without the sensational headline, who would care?
The next big one could come any time and kill us all. If it was really the end of the world would they let us know?
"They" is a nebulous concept that in this case includes tens or hundreds of thousands of professional and amateur astronomers across the globe. A big asteroid on a collision course with Earth would be noticed by many people as it got close, so I'd expect we'd all know about it.
That a meter(oid)/asteroid that gets this kind of press coverage would get a name more creative than "2008 TC3". Geez, the Greeks and Romans had that down thousands of years ago. What happened? Joey