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NASA Counts 4,700 Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Asteroids

Posted by samzenpus on from the time-to-call-bruce dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA continues to get a better handle on the asteroids buzzing around in space saying today that there are roughly 4,700 potentially hazardous asteroids, or as NASA calls them PHAs. NASA says these PHAs are a subset of a larger group of near-Earth asteroids but have the closest orbits to Earth's – passing within five million miles (or about eight million kilometers) and are big enough to survive passing through Earth's atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale."

3 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. All well and good by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 5, Insightful
    But we are still hopeless at spotting these things for instance today Asteroid 2012KA will pass within 224000 Kilometres of earth http://www.universetoday.com/95202/asteroid-2012-ka-to-buzz-earth-on-may-17/ the scary thing is it was only discovered yesterday!!!

    So what are we going to do when one the size of texas comes heading for DC I mean aside from putting marshmallows on extremely long sticks :)

    --

    Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    1. Re:All well and good by jkflying · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You saw what happened to Japan when there was an earthquake in the ocean? Now, imagine the tsunami that would be cause by a meteorite strike.

      --
      Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
  2. Re:More of this please by Nrrqshrr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh, you know how it is... No one will bother with a proposal for this, until it hits something and kills a couple of millions. THEN we will start thinking this out seriously.
    So yeah, let's just hope that the first one to hit won't cause too much damage, but enough to scare the shit out of people.