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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."

2 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 :)

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    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.

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