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Newly Discovered 60-foot Asteroid About To Buzz By Earth
An asteroid nicknamed "Pitbull" and detected by the University of Arizona observatory atop Mt. Lemmon on August 31st will make a close approach to Earth Sunday; it's predicted to pass at a distance of about 25,000 miles, and to pass over New Zealand. According to the article, The asteroid is a similar size to the rock which caused enormous damage to the city of Chelyabinsk in Siberia. Last year's explosion generated the equivalent energy of more than 20 atomic bombs detonating and left more than 1,000 people injured while damaging thousands of buildings. Astronomers at Nasa, who track the movements of the more than 11,000 near-Earth objects, are confident Pitbull will not strike the planet.
So let's say it hit 5 miles off the coast of San Francisco.. what would happen?
And whatif it hit in the center of the US, on land? Are we talking a loud noise? A meteor crater type of thing? The end of the world?
Please tell me how scared I need to be for next time! Thanks!
This thing left Earth space six hours ago! It'll be closer to Mars than us by the time I make my first pot of Coffee on Monday.
moox. for a new generation.
Now what could we possibly have done in such a short time, should it have been heading directly towards us?
I know this is a nitpick, but this is a site for nerds after all. It's NASA.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
More like a Chihuahua.
A Chihuahua is going to nip and screw your ankles up. Take out a city.
A Pitbull will tear your ass up beyond repair. Extinction level event.
And why not split it into a few more fragments for other terrorist/militant/organised crime/separatist groups across the world. There would be some collateral damage. But then who cares as long our countries are safe, eh?
That is a lot of energy. Has anyone studied using the energy for space travel?
Unless you are converting ice to fuel what energy is that? Kinetic energy, a glancing impact sending you off on some vector (pool table physics)?
The event won't be bright enough for binoculars, but with a magnitude of up to 12, it should be visible with a simple telescope.
Or is the same asteroid making two passes?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This one decided it would rather spend another aeon in the cold of space alone than land in Russia.
Cause science?
It detonated about 30km above Earth, and most of the kinetic energy was absorbed by the atmosphere. If the detonation happened *in* or near a city, the devastation would have been what you'd imagine it would have been, rather than what it really was -- an atmospheric explosion in one of the most remote inhabited areas of the planet.
purely guess-work, but perhaps 19.9 of those atom-bomb-units were spent by the fragments passing through the atmosphere?
An "atomic bomb unit" is a very loose concept, based on the yield of the obsolete Hiroshima bomb. this graph shows the yield of various atomic bombs of the USA. This meteor, with a yield of about 440 kt of TNT, would be smack in the middle of the distribution, with bombs ranging from 100 times less powerful to 100 times more powerful. So it was a very powerful explosion. It's good it happened so far up.
My comet materia was lost
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is anyone else unnerved by the short notice of passing asteroids?
No, because we're getting early warning of near inconsequential asteroids. That indicates that we have decent early warning. You do want to know that at least you're detecting this stuff before it hits.
Then why did you name it pitbull? "don't worry he won't bite"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
For about 5 seconds.
Because that's as much time as it takes you to realize you'd spend just as much (more, actually) energy to rendezvous with it, only to find out that it's now (relative to you) a stationary chunk of inert materials.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Your plan is working so well that you somehow still know about ISIS, and it bothers you so much that you have to convince yourself they don't exist.
If this "energy" measure refers to the original kinetic energy and not the impact energy, it is very disingenuous. We could likewise say that when a car pulls over from the freeway from doing 80 mp/h, to enter a truck stop, and then is involved in a minor fender-bender in the parking lot, it had the "energy of an 80 mp/h car". But, oh, science! Much of that energy was dissipated by earlier braking along the exit way, as well as panic braking just before the accident.
Oh, well it could well be made up of platinum or whatever, but that's not going to get you any energy usable for propulsion out of it.
If the intent is to capture resources, that's different. This twerp was asking about using it for travel. Completely different mission profile. ... oh, and I'm a space nutter myself, thank you very much.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Then divide by two or three for all the duplicate stories on the same rock.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
"it is very disingenuous"
Disagree completely.
The verbiage is very clear. When the meteor exploded, it had a kinetic energy measurement. That measurement was approximated to equivalent of 20 or so Hiroshima equivalent atomic bombs. The meteor itself, as a whole, did not impact the earth - as a car would have impacted (whatever) in an accident -- instead, it exploded into many smaller pieces, some of which made it to Earth. To match your analogy, the meteor's explosive kinetic energy is a meaningless measurement - but rather only the individual shards that actually touched the planet matter, no? I don't get that. When cars brake, they also don't have farther reaching explosive qualities that impact thousands of people..even given the remoteness of the explosion.
The meteor exploded far enough above the planet, seemingly due to the composition and changes it experienced during entry, that it did not cause catastrophic damage..but, it could have had it exploded some kilometers later. I don't see how it is disingenuous when they clearly state that the measurement is *of the explosion*, not *of the impact at Earth touchdown*, and if you have trouble making that articulation in the verbiage I don't have much else to say on the topic.
I've been to Managua, and I prefer Detroit. If it blew up the city, it would be an improvement.