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Asteroids Flyby — 2010 RF12 & 2010 RX30

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the duck-and-cover dept.

Ernesto Guido writes "Two small asteroids (2010 RF12 & 2010 RX30) will pass within the Moon's distance of Earth today, September 08, 2010." One is 6-14 meters and the other is 10-20, so even if they change course, don't expect Bruce Willis to be called in.

19 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Ob by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is there any chance it will hi&^8@
    &/.'[#
    no carrier

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Bruce Willis by joe2tiger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I never saw Armageddon when it came out and never bothered to rent it since. I heard so many bad things about that movie.

    1. Re:Bruce Willis by Pojut · · Score: 2, Informative

      Purely from an entertainment perspective, it's fun and enjoyable (Tiny Lister alone makes it worth watching.) When you start focusing on scientific inaccuracy is when it starts to suck.

      If you're able to disconnect yourself from "reality" and just watch a movie, you are almost guaranteed to enjoy it. If you have trouble disconnecting yourself, you will likely hate it.

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    2. Re:Bruce Willis by Dancindan84 · · Score: 2, Informative

      (Tiny Lister alone makes it worth watching.)

      By not being in it? It was Michael Clarke Duncan playing the gigantic black guy in Armageddon.

      --
      "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
    3. Re:Bruce Willis by Goboxer · · Score: 3, Funny

      SPOILER: Turns out he's a ghost. The earth is destroyed.

    4. Re:Bruce Willis by ohcrapitssteve · · Score: 2, Interesting

      He's probably thinking of Fifth Element, in which Tiny Lister plays the president of Earth. Essentially, some unnamed evil force, in the form of an asteroid that can make phone calls, is bent on destroying all life.

      I made that sound really silly but it's actually one of my favorite movies of all time.

    5. Re:Bruce Willis by MozeeToby · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Scientific inaccuracy doesn't bother me unless it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Take the dreaded movie The Core as an example. Ship that can withstand the Earth's pressure? Sure, movie doesn't work without it. Laser that can drill through solid rock at many kilometers per hour? Again, necessary for the story. I can deal with that because you can't make the same movie without abandoning reality.

      On the other hand, boosting the power of your nuclear weapon by placing reactor fuel next to the bomb? There's a dozen more accurate ways the ending could have played out that would have left the rest of the movie unchanged. Having the characters walk from one compartment of the ship to the other, when the exterior shots clearly show that they should have to climb ladders? Completely destroys the movie for me. At that point it's not about the story at all, it's just plain laziness on the part of everyone involved. It's not the inaccuracy that ruins the movie for me, it's the laziness.

    6. Re:Bruce Willis by oodaloop · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, he rides it like Capt King Kong (played by Slim Pickens) rode a nuclear weapon like it was a horse in Dr. Strangelove. He even references Slim Pickens as he does it.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    7. Re:Bruce Willis by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Fifth Element is infinitely better than Armageddon. I've seen Armageddon once, and I'll never get that hours back. If Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay are anywhere near a given movie I don't bother.

      Number one rule for any science fiction or fantasy story: Stick to the rules you define in your universe. Tell a story in that framework.

      It's essentially like following a DnD rulebook. We don't need to know how magic works in THAT universe by trying to explain it with the rules from OUR universe. Attempting to do so either removes the magic (bad) or doesn't make sense (handwaving).

      Star Wars worked when you didn't try to explain light sabers, the force, or much of their technology. The prequels and other mistakes fell into the trap of trying to explain it to us in terms of our own universe's rules:

      Miticlorians
      Kessel Run
      etc.

      Write a story, stick a dragon in it. Call it magic.

      Don't try to explain that the dragon eats a certain type of rock, and instead of burping stores the hydrogen gas inside of airbladders that make it buoyant in air. The problem isn't that you are wrong (it's your universe) but when you define yourself by OUR physical rules, it means that the characters in YOUR universe now have to conform to that set of rules.

      So why would that be a problem?

      We are VERY good at understanding our own universe's rules instinctively. Once defined as following our rules, we will wonder why your characters didn't just.... or why they haven't invented... and why did he try that when...

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
  3. Comet my ass... by Cornwallis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you look at this picture from the site you'll see the trail isn't straight.

    http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w189/walcom77/2010_RF12_120sec.jpg

    This is a UFO. Finally, proof.

  4. Re:why not put something on there? by x2A · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Is the problem that they are always being detected too late to do anything with them?"

    It can be, if they either come from the direction of the sun, or from the galaxy center where there's a lot of bright stars and other things moving, it can be more difficult to spot them. But while they're zipping past the earth at high speed is probably not the best place to intercept them anyway, as you need to get up to the speed 'n direction that they're travelling, and that direction is going to be altered somewhat as they pass by the earth, chasing them slightly further out is more likely going to be a lot easier. If there was enough interest in it.

    --
    The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
  5. Not so small ... by tgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A 20 meter asteroid is not all that small ... if it actually hit the earth, it could potentially make a few million people have a really bad day.

    1. Re:Not so small ... by courteaudotbiz · · Score: 3, Informative

      It all depends on the composition of the asteroid. If it is more dense (like iron), it may make a lot of damage or create a small tsunami, since it wont disintegrate or explode before impact. If it is less dense (ice/rock), it should partly disintegrate or explode high in the atmosphere.

      Yes, there would be damage, like the Tunguska event in which estimates give it "a few tens of meters across", but the uninhabited area of the world is a lot larger than the inhabited area, so most chances are there would be few casualties, except if it explodes directly over a large city.

    2. Re:Not so small ... by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It wouldn't even hit the ground. As TFA says, it would burn up in the atmosphere. And if it were bigger, large enough to be 20 yards wide when it hit, chances are it would hit the ocean (most of the world is ocean) and wouldn't even produce a small tsunami.

      A 20 meter astreoid IS small.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
  6. We should still sling Bruce at it by grasshoppa · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just to be sure something like "Live Free, Die Hard" doesn't happen again.

    In fact, I'm a big fan of slinging stars after asteroids. We could do it in the same style as throwing a perfectly good virgin in to a volcano, but with less loss of anything worthwhile.

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
    1. Re:We should still sling Bruce at it by bjackson1 · · Score: 2, Funny

      We're going to have to call in the Puppeteers if we want to move something as massive as Bruce Willis.

  7. Re:that's right by rachit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Er, if they change course, we'd be calling in Will Smith and order a couple MacBooks.

  8. Re:why not put something on there? by Teancum · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most rocks that come this close to Earth are in orbits tied to Earth's and will come close again every few years. If we wanted to put a probe (or a manned lander) onto one of these, we could target one we've spotted before and arrange to intercept it on a future visit. There's no obvious incentive to visit one the moment we spot it.

    Surprisingly, the Obama administration is proposing a manned mission to some of these smaller chunks of rock. Lockheed-Martin wrote a white paper on a proposed mission to an asteroid using the Orion spacecraft that can be accessed here:

    http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/ssc/Orion/Toolkit/OrionAsteroidMissionWhitePaperAug2010.pdf

    The missing planning is still at a very early stage and there is no reason to believe that Congress will necessarily fund such a project, but it seems like this is a cheaper option than going to the Moon or to Mars, and at the very least would help to prove deep-space manned spaceflight capabilities for missions to other places.

    While there won't be an incentive to visit an asteroid right after it is spotted, there are some smaller asteroids that have already been spotted that might make some interesting targets in the future.

  9. In Other Armageddon News by DynaSoar · · Score: 2, Informative

    The current cumulative impact probability of all objects tracked by SENTRY now exceeds 1.5% for the next 100 years. This is from ~300 known bodies with non-zero impact probability. They estimate that they've discovered 10% of such potential planetary post hole diggers.

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B