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Asteroid To Pass Near Earth On Monday
TigerNut writes "Asteroid 2011 MD was discovered on June 22 by LINEAR, and its flight path will take it within 8000 miles (12000 km) of Earth. Orbital predictions indicate that its flight path will be significantly altered by this close approach."
The opening paragraph of the fine article: Asteroid 2011 MD, a chunk of rock estimated to be 25 to 55 feet (8 to 18 m) across, [...]
Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
I'm amazed that 25 feet qualifies as an asteroid.
You can't take the sky from me.
Some definitions call anything below fifty meters a meteoroid.
I'm even more amazed that we could accurately detect and track an object of this size.
Quoting the fine article: "But there's no chance that the asteroid will hit Earth on this approach, and almost no risk at its next close approach, in 2022. If the asteroid did strike, it would probably explode in the upper atmosphere — a fine spectacle, but harmless."
Post tenebras lux. Post fenestras tux.
Right, because a golf ball that is about 1/150th the size of a human is exactly like hitting something (say, the Earth) with something that is 1/50,000,000th the size of it. The earth getting hit with a 25 foot object at fast speed is probably less like getting hit in the nuts with a golf ball and more like getting hit in the upper arm by a spec of sand.
An asteroid eventually hitting the earth is a sure thing, but hitting "us" is far from a sure thing. The asteroid most likely to hit earth in our lifetime has a 99.918% chance of missing.
That's deceptively close, 8000 miles is the diameter of the earth. This thing is only gonna miss us by an earths width!
"Space... is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is..." "The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination." Lint might actually be a generous descriptor.
Good-bye
Not everything in this life can be monitored or prevented. There is very little point in spending huge sums of money scanning for world killers as at this point there isnt much we can do about it anyways.
Good-bye
...of the asteroids that we know about...
Getting hit in the upper arm by a spec of sand might not hurt you, a human, but it would be devastating to a colony of microbes living on your arm in that spot.
It appears to be unresolved which impact crater was the one that killed the non-avian dinosaurs (the avian variety are still here: we call them "birds" now). However, the Chicxulub crater in Mexico dating from around that time was caused by a 6-mile wide asteroid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
A quarter-mile wide asteroid is nothing to sneeze at, and would probably destroy a city or worse, but isn't nearly as bad as this one which caused a giant cloud to cover the planet. Of course, the devastation of an asteroid depends on other factors besides its size, including its composition, angle of entry, and entry velocity.
Animations Here are some nice animations of the path of the asteroid.
I sure wouldn't want an object like that falling on my car, or my home, or into my pool, or onto my dog, or even onto myself.
and especially not your testicles.
Is there any chance that this could brake into fragments due to tidal forces when it passes close to the Earth?
Depends on if it has disc or drum brakes, I suppose.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
According to the Discover Article (http://news.discovery.com/space/visualizing-asteroid-2011-md-zip-past-earth-animation-110624.html), this is within the orbit of GPS satellites. While it seems most are not concerned about a collision with Earth, what happens if it takes out a satellite (or two)? Or something worse like colliding with the ISS. I hope there are some observation satellites than can a good view of the approach (and/or pass).
First of all, it is so small that it wouldn't even hit the earth, so the entire analogy is goofy.
If the asteroid did strike, it would probably explode in the upper atmosphere — a fine spectacle, but harmless.
An asteroid would have to be thousands of feet to create a nuclear winter. I'm sure it could be reasonably smaller and still destroy all life on Earth. The one that may have wiped out the dinosaurs was apparently about 42,000 feet. Whatever it was that hit Tunguska is suspected to have been a couple hundred feet. The asteroids expected to pass near earth this century We have one about 1,000 feet coming in 2029 that (if it hit) would be 65,000 times more powerful than the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.
Worrying about something so small as this is just silly and, frankly, anything that won't wipe out an entire city is fairly insignificant, as far as I'm concerned. I'm thinking about the real threats out there that we couldn't give a shit about, because our society is more concerned with having a pothole filled than a disaster averted (or they're all too busy eagerly hoping for Armageddon, so their goofy prophecies can be "fulfilled").
I punched in what numbers I could find on this object and if it were to hit the earth, it would be "barely audible" even within one mile (5dB). The object has to be significantly larger to even form a crater of any kind. All you'll end up with are small fragments that hit all over an area. I suck at math, but I suspect that with as little of the Earth that is actual land mass and then the even smaller percentage of that which is populated, the odds of even one fragment hitting a populated area are extremely small. It's not like a 25ft or 50ft object is going to hit and burst into fragments directly over a metro area. (I mean, possible, sure, but extremely unlikely).
Here, you can punch in numbers on this and other objects hitting earth, yourself: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
I only really played around with porous and dense objects hitting earth; not a body of water. The couple quick checks I did on it hitting water (depending on depth, of course) show that it would have to hit really close to shore (within a few miles) to have any real impact on the shoreline.
So as long as it doesn't hit Earth's nuts, everything should be all right. Right?
But seriously. Sure, the energy of the impact depends on mass and speed. And hence also the damage done. And if we were talking about an asteroid of 25 miles across, I'd certainly go and spend my money on some fun before it's all over.
The possible damage an object can have on impact depends on three things: Speed, mass and volume. Now, 7.5m across (that's 25ft in SI units) isn't even a pebble on the stellar scale. Still, if accelerated to speeds beyond 0.1c and having a mass of 7+ g/cm we'd be facing quite a threat (according to this it seems the average density is closer to 1-3 g/cm, though). Since the pebble is affected by Earth's gravity, enough to change its course, my guess is that the kinetic energy (which, again, depends on mass and velocity) is fairly low. An impact would certainly be noticeable, no doubt about that, and it would also most likely not be pleasant to live right where it comes down. But I guess we'll have to look elsewhere for the big killer of 2012.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've seen that impactor estimator before, and it is pretty interesting.
The sad thing is that those who are alarmist generally haven't been paying attention to the skies anyway. I've seen some spectacular meteor showers including some meteors that I've personally seen that have exploded and produced a shower of sparks that rival or even surpass anything I've seen from a commercial fireworks display (like a 4th of July celebration) and I've even heard a sonic boom before caused by one of these object passing by. You can play with the numbers to see how large of an object that would require (it did scare the crap out of me when I heard the boom) but it did happen where I was an eyewitness. I think that was one of the Leonid storms that I was watching (more than a decade ago), so it was a bit more unusual than an ordinary night.
Stuff like that happens with some regularity on the Earth, including some object that are even larger from time to time. Most people don't notice because they are blissfully ignorant. Perhaps that is for the better anyway.
Whenever you hear something like this, the headline is always "Asteroid to Pass Within XXX of Earth!!!"
The first things I want to know are not the distance, but its size and velocity. Because those tell me how hard they better work on knowing the exact distance.
Reading this thread I keep remembering the movie "Idiocracy", and that "ow my balls" show. This does not bode well for the future of nerding.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is why the oximoronic term "astronomically small" has been coined.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Of course that's what they said.
Consider this. If they *know* it's going to hit the Earth, and even estimate about where it will hit, there are three choices.
1) Tell the truth and say "It's going to hit here at this time, with the effective energy of X atomic bombs" (I love that SI unit). People will panic. You wouldn't get any sort or orderly evacuation. Imagine if it were to hit near a metro area in the US. Millions of people would be displaced, even if it's only temporary. Now, what if they were off by a couple hundred miles? Aw shit, sorry guys, we were wrong. You evacuated to the impact site. Doesn't matter much, since you're dead.
2) STFU and don't say anything. Always a good choice, except amateur astronomers will likely spot it too. Again, when that makes the news, there will be mass panic, and an abundance of bad intelligence on the impact location, strength, etc.
3) Say "Don't worry, it'll miss us." If that ends up being true, there is no mass panic. No evacuations. No looting, robbing, raping, or pillaging. Life goes on as boring as ever. If it does hit, they can say "Oops, sorry". I'm sure that would be accompanied with a detailed explanation of how they were unable to calculate for some unknown like a freak solar flare or something.
As someone else pointed out, they said it'll miss by about 12,000 kilometers. That sounds safe until you consider that the distance from the Earth to the Moon averages about 384,000 kilometers. Or how about this, the object is going to pass through Geostationary Orbit (GEO) twice (once coming, once going), and at least into Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). It won't be a danger to the ISS, who sits far below that. There are plenty of satellites floating around in MEO and GEO.
It's doubtful an object the size of that asteroid would intersect with a satellite, but it is a risk. That could result in extra space debris, or a rather uncoordinated reentry of a satellite or other "parked" space junk.
So, it's not just going to pass by harmless through empty space. It's going to pass through space where we have a bunch of shit laying around.
Myself, I'm not worried. It's a small rock that has a small risk of hitting the Earth or something close by. I won't discount the possibility that a fast moving rock may hit us very hard and very fast, but if it does, there isn't much we can do about it anyways. If it does hit us an cause an ELE, I'll work on what to do from there. With any luck, it won't crash through the roof of my office, and onto my desk. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Sounds like it's practicing. I think we should nuke it, just to be sure.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."