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Small Asteroid To Pass Close To Earth Tomorrow
Matt_dk writes "A small asteroid will pass very close to Earth this Tuesday. Astronomers are still tracking the object, now designated as 2010 TD54, and various estimates say it should come within anywhere from 52,000 km (33,000 miles) to 64,000 km (40,000 miles) on October 12, with closest approach at approximately 11:25 UT."
In other news "retired Air Force officer, Stanley A. Fulham", whoever that guy might be, "predicts October 13, 2010 as the date for a massive UFO display over the world’s principal cities". ;-) Given the distance, can we really be sure it is an asteroid ?
http://www.disclose.tv/forum/october-13-2010-worldwide-ufo-display-t33304.html
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Please place Bruce Willis on standby.
they are doing to us what they did to the narn and hurling meteors at us form there mass driver weapons , having to be way back off in solar system means they cant be too accurate
I was kinda alarmed when I read the name "2010 T" which means it was discovered in the first half of October, 2010 (as opposed to discovered in the second half via time travel). And in fact TFA says it was discovered Oct 9.
TFA also says it's a pretty small asteroid only a few meters across, which is a pretty good excuse for not finding it sooner (and makes it Mostly Harmless), but still... More funding to asteroid finding/tracking pls thx.
The enemies of Democracy are
no bigger than a chihuahua's head.
THL phish sticks
A five-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 30 million would be expected to pass daily within a lunar distance, and one might strike Earth’s atmosphere about every 2 years on average.If an asteroid of the size of 2010 TD54 were to enter Earth’s atmosphere, it would be expected to burn up high in the atmosphere and cause no damage to Earth’s surface.
Is it because we know about it? If this happens daily and would cause no harm if striking the Earth...then why is it newsworthy?
Geosync is only 26200 miles ... the uncertainty is almost large enough that it could hit a geosync satellite. If only they provided a std deviation or some other probability metric.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
A telescope of the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey north of Tucson, Arizona discovered 2010 TD54 on Oct. 9 at (12:55 a.m. PDT) during routine monitoring of the skies.
. . . if an asteroid can get this close to us without our knowledge until 3 days before a flyby, the Pan-STARRS isn't doing enough to detect NEOs in advance.
from TFA:
"its closest approach to Earth's surface at an altitude of about 45,000 kilometers"
Only in astronomical terms would 45,000 KM be called close...
"At that time, the asteroid will be over southeastern Asia in the vicinity of Singapore. "
And I would not call 45,000km as "in the vicinity of' when even South America is only about 1/5 of the distance further away...
Does Hot Fudge Sundae fall on Tuesdae this year?
http://blogostuff.blogspot.com/
International Space Station: 229 miles
Geosynchronous orbit: 26,200 miles
Moon: 236,216 miles
OTOH, driving (traffic accidents) and heart disease is something that I'm mildly concerned about. The odds are, those are things will take me out prematurely.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
A five-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 30 million would be expected to pass daily within a lunar distance, and one might strike Earth’s atmosphere about every 2 years on average.
So really this happens all the time.
If an asteroid of the size of 2010 TD54 were to enter Earth's atmosphere, it would be expected to burn up high in the atmosphere and cause no damage to Earth's surface.
AND nobody will notice if it does decide to visit our planet. Maybe it will even hit one of those "dead satellites" and do its bit to clean up the junk in geosync for us.
I suspect this article is nothing but NASA's way of saying "moar $$$ pl0x!!!!!1"
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
OMG it's going to hit us!
...I will be passing gas near Earth tomorrow.
...but will not, alas, hit it.
Why is the post-apocalyptic paradise just out of reach? After 40 years of Cold War teasing, I was almost ready to give up hope, but asteroids still mock us. I cry at all the missed opportunities.
Advice: on VPS providers
All of you showing concern over this event should have a gander at orbit@home, a distributed computing approach to monitoring near-Earth asteroid activity.
For optimal comment enjoyment, take red pill now.
Good use of the Russian Reversal there I'll admit, but I was talking about Peter Stormare's Lev Andropov character in the 1998 film, in case y'all didn't pick up on that.
My previously-designed Magic card for Yakov:
Name: Yakov Smirnoff
Mana Cost: 1 Blue, 1 Colorless
Legendary Creature - Human
Rules Text: Untap Yakov, pay 1, say something that refers to a Slashdot meme: Switch target creature’s power and toughness until end of turn.
Flavor Text: In Soviet Cartamundi plant, cardboard prints YOU!
Power/Toughness: 2/1
(This is a joke card, but there is an actual ability now [premiered in 2008's _Shadowmoor_] that has you untap a creature to use an ability, instead of tapping like, say, Prodigal Sorcerer.
http://magiccards.info/shm/en/16.html for example
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
You know it's going to change course and enter earth's atmosphere, unleashing a horde of super-nanonites that will massively replicate and rapidly consume all the resources of earth.....
Then you can stop worrying about asteroids from space - can't do anything about them anyway.
Of course we can do something about asteroids from space! It's actually quite simple conceptually, and quite feasible technologically, to prevent a catastrophic asteroid impact, if and only if you detect them sufficiently far -- as in years -- in advance. A spacecraft of reasonable mass equipped with ion engines for long-term station keeping could act as a gravity tractor and pull the asteroid out of the impact trajectory. It doesn't take a whole lot of acceleration today to prevent an impact in five or ten years.
So you should be worrying, and asking your politicians what they are doing to make sure we can detect planet-killer asteroids sufficiently far in advance. We need more funding for searching and tracking of asteroids, and some test missions to work the kinks out of the process of actually moving asteroids so we're ready if we find an potential danger without sufficient time for an R&D phase.
We're starting to fund the search/tracking part, though still inadequately for the magnitude of the problem (as in the amount of space and potential objects). Only the Russians AFAIK are doing anything about actually trying to implement the solution to actually preventing a catastrophic impact. More funding pls thx!
The enemies of Democracy are
Don't complain about stupid jokes. In space no one can hear you, on Slashdot no one cares.
Paraphrasing, an asteroid this size would burn up in our atmosphere.
Move along, nothing to see here.
NASA has intercepted a stream messages being constantly coming from the "asteroid". It has been decoded. It says, "Attention Heaven's Gate. Your pick up time is in 24 hours. Please prepare. Sorry for the delay"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You're gonna tell me that the "artists impression" credited by NASA is 33000 miles from Earth? It looks like 2000 miles altitude at most. This is the kind of dishonesty that ruins the public faith in anything to do with the government.
Nasa this is this what we need for my country,where on the world is the best place to find asteroid fragments
Katalog Firm
I for one will sleep in my corrugated tin shed with a loaded shotgun and rations and wait to welcome our new zombie overlords...
What should I do? Take my hat off
No left turn unstoned.