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Russian Meteor Likely an Apollo Asteroid Chunk
astroengine writes "Helped by the extensive coverage of eyewitness cameras, CCTV footage and a fortuitous observation made by the Meteosat-9 weather satellite, Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin of the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, have been able to reconstruct the most likely orbit of the meteoroid that slammed into the atmosphere over the Russian Urals region on Feb. 15. What's more, they know what type of space rock it was — the Chelyabinsk-bound meteoroid originated from an Apollo-class asteroid (PDF). Apollo asteroids are well-known near-Earth asteroids that cross the orbit of Earth. Around 5,200 Apollo asteroids are currently known, the largest being 1866 Sisyphus — a 10 kilometer-wide monster that was discovered in 1972."
Nice flying, Apollo.
- Starbuck
So it wasn't a Gu'ald attack?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_asteroids
10k wide? And we don't have Bruce Willis on stand by at ALL TIMES!?!?!?
Waiting for an amusing sig.
I know Jorge! That work is quite amazing. They are working based on shadows. They measure the shadows of lampposts changing in small fractions of time, their size and angle, and do the same from very different places in Russia. The result is amazing!
What I read: "Russian Meteor Likely an Apollo Astronaut Chunk"
"the largest being 1866 Sisyphus — a 10 kilometer-wide monster that was discovered in..."
WAIT! I KNOW THIS ONE! Is it 1866?
"...1972."
oh. okay :(
Something's wrong when a 10 KILOMETER wide astroid has 'sisy' in its name, just sayin'.
There is apparently this one class of fairly harmless people who just can't accept that life isn't as exciting as an action movie.
Simultaneously in Topeka Kansas a 41 year old woman bludgeons her husband to death with a frozen honey ham. Coincidence? You decide.
"His name was James Damore."
claimed that the video and photos of the impact area showed just a perfect ice hole
I've heard rumours that John C Dvorak has been described as "just a perfect ice hole" himself on occasion.
Coincidence? You decide.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
There are only 2 types of Earth crossing asteroids: Apollos with a semi major axis larger than 1AU and perihelion smaller than Earth's aphelion and Atens with a semi major axis smaller than 1AU and aphelion larger than Earth's perihelion. There are 4803 known Apollo asteroids (I don't know where the 5200 number in the summary comes from but IAU's Minor Planet Center knows of only 4803) and 747 known Atens, so there was a very good chance that the meteorite was an Apollo...
Yay, what a surprise: "likely an Apollo"...[sarcasm] gosh, that is unexpected! [/sarcasm]
Given that the vast majority of objects in earth-crossing orbits are Apollos, that is hardly a surprising conclusion. It would have been much more interesting if it was an Aten - much less of those around. Or a comet fragment
87% of asteroids in earth-crossing orbits are Apollos. 13% are Atens. Then there is a n unknown quantity of cometary objects
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
the meteorite was not from space but part of a U.S. weapons test
They need better intel. Everyone in the US knows our military industrial complex isn't about working weapons...it's about milking tax dollars in going far beyond budgets to improve SEC filings. Can anyone in the US name 5 successful weapons programs to go into production over the last 10 years without major problems?
DId one of the Apollo astronauts have trouble with weightlessness? Perhaps a bad breakfast that morning?
and photos of the impact area showed just a perfect ice hole
Dis somanumbatching country was founded so that the liberties of common patriotic citizens like me could not be taken away by a bunch of fargin iceholes
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
The article is wrong, and overstates the risks.
It, in a fit of alarmism, claims that there are 5,200 of these.
In fact, there are only 5,199 now . . .
hawk
The asteroid was obviouisly from Klendathu, lets go kill some bugs!
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#Would you like to know more?#
So, if there 80 million of these Apollo Asteroids, and 500 known, there's 160,000 unknown asteroids for every known one. I'd presume that there's recording of prior observations of the Apollo Asteroids, and it would be interesting to discover whether this asteroid has been observed in the past. We hear all this publicity about near-hits (near-miss is a term that makes no sense) that have been tracked, but this was a hit that wasn't tracked. This high ratio of unknown Apollo asteroids suggests that reliably tracking asteroids to determine which will hit is a tough problem.
Unless hits can be tracked with high probability, coming up with ways to adjust the orbits of planet-killing hits is not worth worrying about. We won't need to send in the drilling team if we can't see them coming. Michio Kaku went to the trouble of telling us that if the orbit was a few seconds different, it could have been a big catastrophe, but how is that relevant if we can't track them?
Not many people are going to get that one. Keep trying...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes