Slashdot Mirror
A Small Asteroid Buzzed Earth Wednesday, But Everything's Cool (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: If the Earth were a person, it might have felt a sudden wind rustling its hair when a small asteroid whizzed past the planet on Wednesday. The asteroid, saddled with the name 2016 RB1, is a new discovery. Astronomers just noticed it on September 5 thanks to the keen eye of a telescope from the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona. What makes 2016 RB1 so sneaky is its small size. It's only about 25 to 50 feet (7 to 16 meters) in diameter. It passed within just 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) of Earth, which NASA helpfully translates into 1/10th the distance from Earth to the moon. In terms of the massive size of the galaxy, that qualifies as a relatively close shave. An animated GIF of the flyby shows a tiny white dot moving against a grainy space background. The asteroid's trajectory kept it well out of the way of any satellites, and the planet was never in any danger.
25000 miles sounds like a lot, but all the geo-stationary satellites (50+) are just about that high at about 22000 mi.
-Styopa
Is that it passed at 6.3 earth radii. If earth was a standard football (radius 4.5 inches/11.5 cm) it passed 28 inches (72 cm) away. Comfortably safe.
Well this one was only slightly larger at 20 Meters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So yeah it might have done some significant damage to a city but not a planet killer.
Your welcome
...The asteroid's trajectory kept it well out of the way of any satellites...
Fortunately, the trajectory took the rock to the south of Earth where there are very few satellites. If the rock had passed by at that same distance on the equatorial plane (where the geosynchronous satellites reside at 25,000 miles), many, many people would have lost a lot of sleep.
I for one am grateful for learning about this after it was all over.
Heavens, my pretty little head would've been worried for three days, had it been publicized then...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
When a near-miss asteroid of any size is spotted with only three day's notice, it's probably not a good idea for them to say that "The planet was never in any danger."
Unless they want everyone to just shrug it off and go about our normal business while we wait to die in a sudden 'KT' fiery maelstrom.
Do they?
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
In terms of the massive size of the galaxy, the closest distance of this rock to Earth and the distance from Pluto to the Sun are pretty much the same.
Can someone chime in with the results of a hit? Will that thing survive entry/blow up in the atmosphere/do damage? What would the expect force be (m * a) and what would that mean to us in layman's terms?