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Asteroid Whizzing By Earth 6 Times Closer Than the Moon (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the asteroid-sighting dept.

An anonymous reader shares a CNET report: The problem with asteroids passing near Earth is that they're often difficult to spot. Fortunately the hardest ones to see in our neighborhood also tend to be the smaller ones. Such is the case with 2017 BH30, which was discovered Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey just hours before passing by us at the creepy-close distance of only 40,563 miles (65,280 kilometres). This asteroid is estimated to be between 15-32.8 feet (4.6-10 metres) in length, making it somewhere between the size of a truck and a... big truck. That's pretty small by asteroid standards, but it's also the closest spotted asteroid to pass us since September when asteroid 2016 RB1 passed within 24,000 miles (about 39,000 kilometres) of our planet's surface, putting it almost as close as satellites in geosynchronous orbit. This is the third asteroid to buzz by earth closer than the distance to the moon this year. We don't expect a closer pass by one of these visitors until October, when asteroid 2012 TC4 could come more than twice as close.

31 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Are there more or do we just find more? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can't help it, but those reports have been increasing in numbers rapidly. Either NASA needs money or our detectors have been improving considerably lately.

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    1. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by goombah99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      well at 40K miles its about 10 earth radii. A dart thrown at that radius has about a 1% chance of intersecting within the earth's atmosphere. Since we haven't had a major earth impact in a couple hundred years one might guess that similarly close events are something like 10,000 years apart if they were random events. Thus observing more than one in your life suggests they are not random.

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    2. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Just because you cannot save everyone does not mean everyone has to die.

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    3. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by skids · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You know, even avoiding mass panic for a mostly-harmless air-burst (or perhaps making nuclear weapons trigger fingers less itchy) with a heads up might be worth it, and, if we did find out with decades of warning, we'd have one hell of a fire under our ass to come up with a solution, so who knows what we might come up with.

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    4. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by kwiecmmm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually most asteroids orbit the sun and pass by the earth's orbit on the way in and out. So if we found one on the way in that could hit us on the way out, we could do something about it. Or if we determine the orbit could allow it to hit us the next time it comes through then we could do something about it.

      Ignoring this would make us no better than the dinosaurs.

    5. Re: Are there more or do we just find more? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "even when there is no apparent value in going as deep as they are" = You think possibly preventing a cataclysmic asteroid impact in the next 50 years has no apparent value?

      What is the value of your tautologist's thesis if nothing alive is around to lambaste it? Science is a process, breakthroughs are a result. Policy breaks and is reformed in the wake of it. Governments fall away like old paradigms. Priorities change, societies evolve or go extinct.

      Preventing a civilization-ending impact in the remote chance that we can, with a TINY budget mind you, compared to just about anything else we fund daily?
      You want to say THAT is the great waste. Gee. Spend trillions subsidizing fossil fuel dependencies and let the invisible market-hand absorb the asteroid?

      Your only tacit point is that politicians/leaders in our era are no longer the wise sages or philosopher kings. Neither are you the educated Roman gentry.
      Science is indeed wasted on you. I'd go one further and say preventing your thought-tree's annihilation via space objects seems a waste now also.

      Unfortunately we share the same vulnerable space rock. Were your pure Libertarianism possible, I wouldn't have to worry about YOUR annihilation at all!

    6. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Screw that, I'm supporting #GiantMeteor2020. It appears to be the only sane choice at this point...

    7. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by Quirkz · · Score: 3, Informative

      Except it's not just about one-time interactions. These bullets come back. A close miss today might alert us to an impending hit later on, and give us time to prepare. It's not always just about "incoming now."

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    8. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is pointless to spend a lot of money on this technology,

      Except that "a lot of money" is not required. The equipment used already exists, and even most of the data is already available. It just needs to be analysed to look for the NEOs.

      Sounds great in theory but in practice it's not going to do you any good.

      Except there is plenty we can do. Even with a few hours warning, we can tell people to get away from windows and remove stuff from shelves. Flying glass was the biggest source of injuries from the Chelyabinsk impact.
      Other short term precautions:
      1. Stop trains, so they don't come off the track.
      2. Stop additional cars from entering tunnels.
      3. Pretension seismic dampers in tall structures
      4. Sound an alarm to warn people in warehouses and stores to move away from shelves.
      5. Pull up automatic safely webbing to prevent pallets from falling off racks.
      6. Stop and lower cargo on forklifts.
      7. Start powering down heavy machinery
      8. Stop people from entering elevators
      9. Open fire station doors, so they don't jam closed.
      10. Shutdown the flames in furnaces and water heaters
      11. Start reducing gas pressure in pipelines.
      12. Warn people on beaches to start moving to higher ground.
      13. Start backup diesels for emergency services.
      14. Retract the control rods from nuclear reactors.

    9. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You forgot: 15. Create huge panic and looting.

      Panics rarely happen, and happen much less with longer term warnings. During a crisis, people tend to cooperate and bond together. This is one area where real life diverges from the movies.

      Looting tends to happen in the aftermath of a disaster, so greater warning will be unlikely to make it worse, and will more likely to improve the situation by giving more time to mobilize police and military resources. A warning will also give shop owners more time to get to their shops and exercise their 2nd amendment rights.

    10. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

      I think it's an experiment by the aliens to determine if we're smart enough to survive or not. A test, if you will.

      If we were smart, now that we have the tech to see these NEO asteroids and maybe do something about them, we'd be a little alarmed after seeing so many coming so close, plus one actually hitting us (the Russian impact a few years ago in Chelyabinsk (sp?)), and would be investing real resources into not only looking for these things, but also building systems to counter these threats, such as remote-control interceptors which slowly redirect them into safer orbits.

      We're not doing almost any of this. So we're failing the test. So the next step is that we're going to be hit with a planet-killer. Maybe the aliens will be intentionally sending it our way, or maybe it's been there all along and the aliens have been nudging these small ones towards us to give us a little "assist", hoping that we'd wake up and pay attention to a serious threat to our common survival. So the aliens will probably be disappointed but decide that intervention and rescuing such an obviously short-sighted race is contrary to the interests of their galactic society, so we can look forward to the same fate the dinosaurs suffered.

    11. Re: Are there more or do we just find more? by terjeber · · Score: 2

      Nah, we just need to speed it up a little or slow it down a little and it will miss us by a lot.

    12. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

      Have you considered that moving a "big enough mass" near it will take more energy, be more complicated, and in all ways be more difficult, than just using a rocket motor to thrust the asteroid into a different trajectory? Even colliding a moderate mass against the asteroid to change its path would be easier and more effective than trying to change its direction using gravitational pull.

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    13. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by Black.Shuck · · Score: 2

      What incredibly destructive thing were we about to do 8.48 years ago?

      Well, let's see...

      The United States and the Czech Republic sign an initial agreement to base a United States missile defense system in the Czech Republic. (AP via Google News) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responds to this development, "We will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods." (The Times)

      Dammit!

    14. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by gzuckier · · Score: 2

      Except it's not just about one-time interactions. These bullets come back. A close miss today might alert us to an impending hit later on, and give us time to prepare. It's not always just about "incoming now."

      Not really related, but "Men of Good Will" by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis; written in the middle of the cold war; a brief skirmish between parties from the American and Russian moon bases, with a lot of shots fired harmlessly, results in a permanent cloud of bullets in very low orbit around the moon, with enough random deflections every orbit to keep everybody too busy ducking and patching holes to indulge in any more aggression.

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    15. Re:Are there more or do we just find more? by david_thornley · · Score: 2

      Let's put some plausible out-of-my-ass figures out. Suppose serious asteroid impacts happen about once in fifty million years, which isn't off by an order of magnitude, and that one would cause ten trillion dollars of damage, which is probably reasonable. That means that the expected annual loss of serious asteroid impacts is about $200K, so it makes sense to build something of a warning and defense system, at least a capability that we can implement if we need it.

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  2. 6 times closer than the moon? by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What kind of english is that?

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    1. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Insightful

      compounded by "more than twice as close." Does that mean less than half the distance (my guess) or more than half the distance?

    2. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What kind of english is that?

      That was my thought too. 1/6 the distance of the moon would make more sense. It's like saying Suzy is twice as skinny as Lucy... it doesn't really make sense even though we know what you mean by it.

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    3. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by goombah99 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The article is 6 times less better english speaking than above average. One day I go to park went, There see I a man grinding a monkey's organ.

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    4. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by zm · · Score: 5, Funny

      Slashdot knows words. They are the best words. It's the best English. It's great. Believe me. Let's make /. great again.

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    5. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by Scarred+Intellect · · Score: 4, Funny

      compounded by "more than twice as close." Does that mean less than half the distance (my guess) or more than half the distance?

      Yes.

    6. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by beanpoppa · · Score: 2

      What does 67 degrees above absolute zero have to do with km?

    7. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

      It all depends on how close to the Moon we are these days. I mean, are we still angry at it?

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    8. Re:6 times closer than the moon? by arth1 · · Score: 2

      Similarly jarring is "This asteroid is estimated to be between 15-32.8 feet". It seems fairly clear that estimates that are so loose don't have a tenth of a foot precision. Same with 4.6m for the metric.
      The figures stated are likely due to idiots converting metric to imperial back and forth multiple times, while not taking into account uncertainties, nor going back to the source.

      If I were to guess, it would be that the original said 5-10 m.

  3. I've Had Enough of This by avgjoe62 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the third asteroid to buzz by earth closer than the distance to the moon this year.

    That's it, I'm heading down to the local planning office at Alpha Centauri and lodging a stern complaint about this new hyperspace bypass.

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    1. Re:I've Had Enough of This by skids · · Score: 3, Funny

      Bring a flashlight. And rope. And beware of the leopard.

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  4. Twice as close ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    How about at half the distance ? Twice as close. Means as much as twice as cold.

  5. Six times closer! Four times less! by 0xG · · Score: 2

    Five times the savings!

    *sigh*

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  6. That's what the boss at Chernobyl said by raymorris · · Score: 2

    Retract the control rods from nuclear reactors. ... Oops. I meant insert control rods intonuclear reactors.

    I think that's exactly what the boss at Chernobyl said. :)

  7. Re:Antropogenic Asteroid Activity (AAA) by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    There is one and only one thing I can think of and that is full blown nuclear war.

    Even that is unlikely to make Earth unlivable. Modern nukes are relatively clean, and they are smaller and there are many fewer of them than a few decades ago. A full blown nuclear war may kill a billion or so people, and the economic disruption may kill another billion or two, but humanity would almost certainly survive. Mars, on the other hand, has about a 0% chance of supporting even a single human in the foreseeable future without regular resupply missions from Earth.