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Unknown 7m Asteroid Almost Impacted Earth
xp65 writes "A previously undiscovered asteroid came within 14,000 km of Earth — just over one Earth diameter, 1/30 the lunar distance — on Friday, and astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before closest approach. On Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST, a 7-meter asteroid, now called 2009 VA, came only about 2 Earth radii from
impacting our planet. This is the third-closest known non-impacting Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid. The asteroid was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey and was quickly identified by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge MA as an object that would soon pass very close to the Earth. JPL's Near-Earth Object Program Office also computed an orbit solution for this object, and determined that it was not headed for an
impact." The article notes, "On average, objects the size of 2009 VA pass this close about twice per year and impact Earth about once every 5 years."
Anybody want to weigh in?
You expect nerds and geeks to give their actual weight online?!
a flying rock! call a geoligist!!!
Dang! It's the third time they try to ship my package and miss; I've had enough... And so much for the "confidential" packaging!
Are you kidding? That thing can't even stand up to a bird with a bagel.
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I'm sure if it had been on course to hit Earth, it would have burned up in the atmosphere and whatever's left would be no bigger than a chihuahua's head.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
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naaaah. Let it be in meters. We Amurikans don't do metric, and so we're safe.
AKA Not Much
Unless it lands on your house!
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
Would it penetrate through to basement depth? If not most people here wouldn't notice till the next meal didn't show up.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
Depends. Is there a modifier for a sneak attack?
yeah, +3 HOLY SHIT A FUCKING METEOR!
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
I think the official name is a "Basement Level Event"
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Womprat = 2m
Asteroid = 7m
If by not much bigger you mean nearly triple the size... then yes. It's not much bigger.
this has been you Star Wars nitpick of the day. Thank you.
Say you're a new galactic overlord driving a car, but you're in space, and you're drunk. You see this big blue planet getting bigger and bigger in your windscreen. At the last possible moment, you hear me yelling to get the hell off my lawn, you suddenly swerve, and miss. But you've ruined Cowboy Neal's tulips, you insensitive clod!
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
It would most likely bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 8980 meters. Minor local damage might occur if a larger fragment happens to hit a house.
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=0.001&diam=7&pdens=&pdens_select=8000&vel=17&theta=45&tdens=2500&tdens_select=0
Thanks for not rounding that off to "nine kilometers" or even "about 10 km" as some less mathematically-inclined contributors would have done. If you've laboriously and precisely calculated that 2009 AV is exactly 7.000 meters in diameter, has a density of 8.000 g/cm3 and will hit the atmosphere at a 45.00 degree angle at exactly 17.00 km/s, why give up that hard-earned precision in your result?
What's your point???
Well, we Americans are scared as hell. For all we know, 7 meters could be HUGE!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Thank you for the car analogy. Without it, I would have been totally incapable of understanding the situation.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
You don't get a saving throw against an attack roll in the standard rules for 3.0 or 3.5. I don't think you get one in 4.0 either but I refuse to check unless I absolutely need to. Now, if Earth had class levels in rogue that were high enough and the asteroid had few or no class levels in rogue then Earth wouldn't get the sneak attack damage. I don't know how you check what class levels an asteroid has. Considering that they can't get XP (since the only way they end up at the end of an encounter is dead) they can probably only get class levels if they started that way or if God is a generous DM who gives a lot of XP for roleplaying. However, I'm not sure that asteroids are very good at roleplaying. They don't talk much and when they do you generally don't hear it because of the vacuum.
7 meters isn't big, that's like 28 inches if you set them side-by-side (my volt meter is about 4 inches wide). The post said 7m which is 7MILES! That's HUGE!!!! Now, 14,000 Km, that's 14,000 kilo-miles = 14,000,000 mi... BIG DEAL! It missed us BIG TIME!
Handy thing to have bookmarked
Sounds like a good thing to ping every so often. If the latency goes up or it stops responding altogether then the chances are that a whole load of people somewhere know something that you don't.
£170. Sorry, I don't have it in USD
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
They really needed it 250-300 million years ago though. Tweaking the impact velocity to get roughly the right values according to the article, the calculator reveals anyone on the edge of the crater would be vaporized, ripped to shreds from the pressure wave, then pulverized by the earthquake and drowned by a subsequent tsunami.
Now, THAT is what I call having a bad day.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)