Slashdot Mirror
Earth Avoids Collisions With Pair of Asteroids
Hugh Pickens writes "According to NASA, a pair of asteroids — one just over three miles wide — passed Earth Tuesday and early Wednesday, avoiding a potentially cataclysmic impact with our home planet. 2012 XE5, estimated at 50-165 feet across, was discovered just days earlier, missing our planet by only 139,500 miles, or slightly more than half the distance to the moon. 4179 Toutatis, just over three miles wide, put on an amazing show for astronomers early Wednesday, missing Earth by 18 lunar lengths, while allowing scientists to observe the massive asteroid in detail. Asteroid Toutatis is well known to astronomers. It passes by Earth's orbit every four years and astronomers say its unique orbit means it is unlikely to impact Earth for at least 600 years. It is one of the largest known potentially hazardous asteroids, and its orbit is inclined less than half-a-degree from Earth's. 'We already know that Toutatis will not hit Earth for hundreds of years,' says Lance Benner of NASA's Near Earth Object Program. 'These new observations will allow us to predict the asteroid's trajectory even farther into the future.' Toutatis would inflict devastating damage if it slammed into Earth, perhaps extinguishing human civilization. The asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was about 6 miles wide, researchers say. The fact that 2012 XE5 was discovered only a few days before the encounter prompted Minnesota Public Radio to poll its listeners with the following question: If an asteroid were to strike Earth within an hour, would you want to know?"
I know writing headlines is hard, but this one seems to imply that earth took evasive action. The less exciting "earth does not collide with pair of asteroids" would be a touch less misleading.
And that is diffrent than any other friday, how?
I guess "Asteroid Misses Earth, Just Like It's Done Every 4 Years For Millennia" just wasn't catchy enough
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
In the last 20 years there have been quite a few of these objects passing within the orbit of the moon, prior to that there were few announcements and it's debatable how many were actually tracked. A disturbing number have been found within days as passing and a few were found after they passed. Just looking at the numbers I'd place the odds at high of an impact. We're coming up on a hundred year anniversary of Tunguska so I'd say we're due for a similar impact any day now. It could be tomorrow or a hundred years from now but statistically we're due now. We aren't talking end of the world because most of the world was only affected by the dust of the last major impact and the odds of one hitting a major city are similar to winning the lottery. Unfortunately the odds are high of an ocean impact and that could be worse than a land impact. Very few of these objects are being tracked in the northern hemisphere and virtually none in the lower hemisphere, I can't remember but I think it's a few percent for the south. We spend trillions on defending against Arab rednecks and a few million a year on tracking near Earth Objects. Our priorities are sadly are on the wrong threats.
Earth's cat-like reflexes never fail to impress.
I would definitely want to know. I would leave work, buy booze and party like there is no tomorrow.
But there would almost certainly be a tomorrow. The asteroid was only 50-165 feet in diameter. That is about the estimated size of the Tunguska asteroid/comet, which killed zero people. Even if an asteroid that size hit the ocean or a major city, 99.9% of the people on Earth would survive.
If we were hit by the bigger (three mile diameter) asteroid, it would only have 1/8th the energy of the Yucatan asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Unlike the dinos, we have the ability to eat canned food and stored grain, so many if not most people would likely survive.
It's not the 21st yet...
You know that the Gauls in Asterix are only afraid of the sky falling on their head. And their favorite exclamation is 'By Toutatis!'.
Of course! Time for a quick trip to the whorehouse, then a quicker trip to church to get saved.
After what that priest did to me, I'm gonna have to pray with the hooker...
Also keep in mind, that all the dried dead plants from lack of sunlight will give rise to plenty of inflammable carbon fuel lying around. We are talking about a world wide wildfire. It is interesting how some people think of meteorite as something like a huge nuke, that will kill everything directly/instantly.
Close calls like these do need to be made as sensational as possible, to remind people how important it is to not put all your eggs in one basket, and why cutting NASA's budget is like deciding to do away with life jackets on a ship, so as to "not waste money".
There will be a human-made satellite that will engage in a fly-by to asteroid 4179 Toutatis
The satellite is China's Chang'e 2 and it will rendezvous with 4179 Toutatis.
There are two conflicting reports of the rendezvous date -
According to wikipedia the rendezvous date will be 13th December 2012 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4179_Toutatis
According to another source - http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/20120614-change-2-toutatis.html - the rendezvous date will fall on 6th, January, 2013.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Actually, we are. A 50-165 foot asteroid can sneak up on us, but that isn't going to do much. It has less energy than the 9.0 Fukushima Earthquake, which killed ~10,000 people.
And how much energy from earthquake goes into actual surface damage? I was under impression that vast majority of it is used to shake rocks up and down, which is quite different from releasing same energy in something similar to surface nuclear strike.
I think we should be comparing it to Tunguska event rather than earthquakes. Imagine Tunguska happening over one of densly populated areas. I don't think that it would end up being 2-hours news.